Seamlessly switching among unicast, multicast, and broadcast mobile media content

ABSTRACT

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system for switching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. The method and system involves making unicast content available to the mobile device, making broadcast content available to the mobile device; and providing an application on the mobile device which allows for switching between the unicast and broadcast content.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a Continuation of U.S. application Ser. No.13/454,489 entitled SEAMLESSLY SWITCHING AMONG UNICAST, MULTICAST, ANDBROADCAST MOBILE MEDIA CONTENT, filed Apr. 24, 2012, and U.S.application Ser. No. 13/454,489 is a continuation of U.S. applicationSer. No. 11/956,162 entitled SEAMLESSLY SWITCHING AMONG UNICAST,MULTICAST, AND BROADCAST MOBILE MEDIA CONTENT, filed Dec. 13, 2007,which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. U.S.application Ser. No. 11/956,162 claims the benefit of the followingprovisional applications, each of which is hereby incorporated byreference herein in its entirety:

Ser. No. 60/889,895 MOBILE MEDIA PLATFORM, filed Feb. 14, 2007; and Ser.No. 60/869,889 MOBILE MEDIA PLATFORM, filed Dec. 13, 2006.

BACKGROUND

1. Field

The methods and systems disclosed herein relate to digital mobile mediadelivery.

2. Description of the Related Art

The proliferation of mobile devices worldwide, coupled with the launchof next-generation networks by mobile operators, has lead to a dramaticincrease in mobile rich media consumption. With millions of multimediaenabled mobile devices being released to market, the ability forconsumers to quickly access various forms of content is changing therole of the mobile device. The invention disclosed herein may providethemed, personalized, user-centric, engaging community experiences thatprovide compelling interaction with all types of media content. Theinvention disclosed herein may bridge the divide between media companiesand digital distribution channels enabling both to benefit from themobile content universe.

SUMMARY

The invention may incorporate a multi-tenant platform which may supportvarious types of content and multiple content providers, mobileoperators and other parties within a single hosted environment. Theinvention may include methods and systems for optimization of contentdelivery, facilitating access to content on a mobile device, ingestingcontent, storing content and metadata in a file format optimized for useon a mobile platform, integrating multiple billing systems, enablingcommerce, creating a community and the like. In this application, theterm phone includes any mobile device, such as a personal digitalassistant, portable gaming device, laptop computer, MP3 player, videoplayer, GPS unit, wireless email device, pager, and the like.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system forswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Themethod and system involves making unicast content available to themobile device, making broadcast content available to the mobile device;and providing an application on the mobile device which allows forswitching between the unicast and broadcast content.

In embodiments, unicast content may be made available to the mobiledevice using a mobile media platform. In addition, the unicast contentmay be a multicast content and may be selected from the group consistingof on-demand content, video content, long-tail content, audio content,recorded content, data and clips or some other type of content.Moreover, the unicast content may be side loaded onto the mobile device.Moreover, the unicast content is pre-encoded, encoded on demand andaccess to the unicast content may be paused and later resumed.

In embodiments, broadcast content may be made available to the mobiledevice using the mobile media platform and may be selected from thegroup consisting of linear programming, television, short-head content,radio, live content, data and loops of clips or some other type of mediacontent. Moreover, the broadcast content may be encoded in a live linearmanner taking into consideration at least one of the network, device,delivery method and available bandwidth.

In embodiments, the application may enable content search, contentdiscovery, content protection, and/or mobile commerce. In addition,application may include a user interface. The user interface may varywith the broadcast and unicast nature of the content. In addition, whileproviding broadcast content, the user interface may presentsrecommendations for unicast content and may permit the access ofbroadcast and unicast content simultaneously. Moreover, the userinterface may present recommendations for broadcast content and maydisplay broadcast and unicast content simultaneously. In addition, theuser interface may include administrative user interface.

In embodiments, the user of the mobile device may be presented withcontent recommendations and may be presented with targeted ads. Inaddition the user may be at least one of end users, consumers,advertisers, marketers, content providers, content owners, networks,broadcasters, media companies, mobile carriers, record companies, moviestudios, regulators, mobile device designers, mobile devicemanufacturers, mobile device offerors, mobile service consolidators,affiliates or some other type of user. Further, the content may beavailable to the user through at least one of a distribution channel,wholesale channel, retail channel, mobile operator, web 2.0 website, web2.0 business, device manufacturer, content provider retailer or someother type of medium. In embodiments, content may be made available tothe mobile device in part depending on at least one of locationinformation and location intelligence based on information inputted viathe Internet. Moreover, the content may be a web content, web contenttranscoded in an on-demand manner. In addition, the content may bestreamed, ingested or tagged as broadcast content as part of theingestion process.

In embodiments, provision of may be for selecting at least one ofunicast and broadcast content. In addition, the settlement may be amongat least two of content providers, dealers, affiliates, distributors andadvertisers.

In embodiments, the media records may be generated for at least one ofunicast and broadcast content. The media records may be aggregated ornormalized.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system forswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Theinvention characterizes making unicast content available to the mobiledevice, making broadcast content available to the mobile device, hostingat least one of the unicast and broadcast content on the mobile mediaplatform, and providing an application on the mobile device which allowsfor switching between the unicast and broadcast content.

In embodiments, unicast content may be multicast content, and may beassociated with tags. In addition, the broadcast content may beassociated with tags indicating that it is broadcast content and may bedelivered to the mobile device as the broadcast content. Moreover, theunicast content, when indicated, may be delivered to the mobile deviceas unicast content. In addition, the content may be associated with afeed from a content catalog and may be delivered to the mobile deviceaccording to information contained in the content catalog feed.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system foroptimizing switching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobiledevice. The method and system may include ingesting content, performingat least one of encoding and transcoding the content, hosting at leastone of the unicast and broadcast content on the mobile media platform,delivering unicast content to the mobile device, delivering broadcastcontent to the mobile device and providing an application on the mobiledevice which allows for switching between the unicast and broadcastcontent.

In embodiments, the unicast content may be multicast content. Further,ingestion may be optimized accounting for at least one factor selectedfrom the group consisting of: device profiles, available networkbandwidth, device playback capabilities, content delivery mechanisms,content digital rights management regime, content characteristics orsome other characteristics.

In embodiments, encoding may be optimized accounting for at least onefactor selected from the group consisting of: device profiles, availablenetwork bandwidth, device playback capabilities, content deliverymechanisms, content digital rights management regime, contentcharacteristics or some other characteristics.

In embodiments, transcoding may be optimized accounting for at least onefactor selected from the group consisting of: device profiles, availablenetwork bandwidth, device playback capabilities, content deliverymechanisms, content digital rights management regime, contentcharacteristics or some other characteristics.

In embodiments, hosting may be optimized accounting for at least onefactor selected from the group consisting of: device profiles, availablenetwork bandwidth, device playback capabilities, content deliverymechanisms, content digital rights management regime, contentcharacteristics or some other characteristics.

In embodiments, delivery may be optimized accounting for at least onefactor selected from the group consisting of: device profiles, availablenetwork bandwidth, device playback capabilities, content deliverymechanisms, content digital rights management regime, contentcharacteristics or some other characteristics.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system forswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Themethod and system including storing metadata regarding at least one ofthe broadcast and unicast content in the same file as the content,making unicast content available to the mobile device, making broadcastcontent available to the mobile device and providing an application onthe mobile device which allows for switching between the unicast andbroadcast content.

In embodiments, the unicast content may be multicast content. Further,the file may be in a proprietary format. Furthermore, the file may be anarchive file. Moreover, the information may include a URL associatedwith the schedules for such broadcast content.

In embodiments, the metadata may relate to information regarding thecontent of the file including a description of the content and technicalaspects regarding the content. Further, the metadata may be descriptorsdefined in XML. Furthermore, the metadata for a unicast content file mayinclude information about broadcast content to be associated with theunicast content.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system forswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Themethod and system may include making unicast content available to themobile device, making broadcast content available to the mobile device,providing an application on the mobile device which allows for switchingbetween the unicast and broadcast content.

In embodiments, the unicast content may be multicast content. Further,the notification engine may be a component of a mobile media platform.

In embodiments, while providing access to broadcast content thenotification engine may provide notifications regarding at least one ofthe broadcast content and associated unicast/multicast content. Further,while providing access to unicast content the notification engine mayprovide notifications regarding at least one of the unicast/multicastcontent and associated broadcast content.

In embodiments, a notification may include a link to related content,information regarding charges about to be incurred and/or informationregarding charges incurred. Further, the notification may be anadvertisement for at least one of goods and services. Furthermore, thenotification may be provided as at least one of an email, text message,instant message or some other type of message.

In embodiments, the application may include a user interface and thenotification is provided using the user interface.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system ofswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Themethod and system may include making unicast content available to themobile device, making broadcast content available to the mobile device,providing an application on the mobile device which allows for switchingbetween the unicast and broadcast content and providing searching usinga search engine.

In embodiments, the unicast content may be a multicast content. Further,the search engine may enable searching of at least one of broadcast andunicast content. The searching may be based on at least one of content,data, metadata, tags and content catalog feed or some other type ofdata. The search results for associated broadcast and unicast contentmay be clustered together.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system ofswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Themethod and system may include making unicast content available to themobile device, making broadcast content available to the mobile device,providing an application on the mobile device which allows for switchingbetween the unicast and broadcast content and providing a recommendationusing a recommendation engine.

In embodiments, the unicast content may be multicast content.

In embodiments, while providing access to broadcast content therecommendation may be in connection with associated unicast content.Further, while providing access to unicast content the recommendationmay be in connection with associated broadcast content.

In embodiments, the recommendation may be based on a consumptionprofile, a content catalog feed, content ratings or some otherparameter.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system ofswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Themethod and system may include making unicast content available to themobile device based on at least one of location information and locationintelligence, making broadcast content available to the mobile devicebased on at least one of location information and location intelligenceand providing an application on the mobile device which allows forswitching between the unicast and broadcast content.

In embodiments, the unicast content may be a multicast content. Further,the technology for delivery of content may be selected based on at leastone of location information location intelligence or some otherparameter.

In embodiments, at least one of location information and locationintelligence may be used to provide recommendations and/or administerblack out rule. Further, at least one of location information andlocation intelligence may be used in connection with informationregarding broadcast content to deliver advertisements. Furthermore, atleast one of location information and location intelligence may be usedin connection with information regarding unicast content to deliveradvertisements.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system ofswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Themethod and system including providing an application on the mobiledevice which allows for switching between the unicast and broadcastcontent, providing an interactive programming guide containing at leastone of unicast and broadcast content, making unicast content availableto the mobile device and making broadcast content available to themobile device. The unicast content may be multicast content.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system ofswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Themethod and system may include making unicast content available to themobile device, making broadcast content available to the mobile,providing an application on the mobile device which allows for switchingbetween the unicast and broadcast content and providing a socialnetworking application in connection with the content. The unicastcontent may be multicast content.

In embodiments, the social networking application may be a forum. Theforum may be provided in connection with broadcast content and enablesusers to discuss the broadcast content as it is being broadcast.Further, the forum may be provided in connection with broadcast contentand enables users to share unicast content related to the broadcastcontent as it is being broadcast.

In embodiments, the broadcast content may be multicast content. Further,the social networking application may be a forum. The forum may beprovided in connection with multicast content and enables users todiscuss the multicast content as it is being multicast. Further, theforum may be provided in connection with the multicast content andenables users to share unicast content related to the multicast contentas it is being multicast.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system ofswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Theinvention involves making unicast content available to the mobiledevice, making broadcast content available to the mobile, providing anapplication on the mobile device which allows for switching between theunicast and broadcast content, and providing a social networkingapplication in connection with the content.

In embodiments, the unicast content may be a multicast content.Moreover, the report may be selected from a group consisting oftransaction log, event log, royalty report and recommendation report andmay be accessed from a web interface.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system ofswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Theinvention involves making unicast content available to the mobiledevice, making broadcast content available to the mobile device,providing an application on the mobile device which allows for switchingbetween the unicast and broadcast content and providing advertisingcontent to the mobile device.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system forswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Theinvention involves making unicast content available to the mobiledevice, making broadcast content available to the mobile device,providing an application on the mobile device which allows for switchingbetween the unicast and broadcast content, and providing advertisingcontent to the mobile device.

In embodiments, the advertising content may be selected from the groupconsisting of an interstitial advertisement, banner ad, in stream ad, adplaced in the content itself, ad framing the content, an ad appearingbefore or after other content or some other type of advertisement. Inaddition, the advertisement may be interactive and may be provided aspart of broadcast content containing a link to unicast content orprovided as part of unicast content containing a link to broadcastcontent. Moreover, the advertising content may be provided based on oneof consumption profile, at least one of data about the user and userpreferences, at least one of location information and locationintelligence. Moreover, the advertisement may be provided by an adfulfillment engine.

In embodiments, the present invention provides a method and system forswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Theinvention involves making unicast content available to the mobiledevice, making broadcast content available to the mobile device,providing an application on the mobile device which allows for switchingbetween the unicast and broadcast content, and integrating the provisionof the content with other systems.

In embodiments, the other system may be selected from the groupconsisting of carrier systems, content provider systems, systems ofmobile devices, ad servers, Internet-based systems, web-based systems,billing systems, content delivery systems, encoding and transcodingsystems, storage systems, social networking systems, hosting systems,ingestion systems, security systems, search engines, mobile searchengines or from some other type of system. In addition, the billingsystem may administer at least one of the collection, pricing, billing,mediation, settlement, reporting or some other type of process. Inaddition, the access to broadcast content or unicast content may beprovided on at least one of a pay per duration and subscription model.

These and other systems, methods, objects, features, and advantages ofthe present invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art fromthe following detailed description of the preferred embodiment and thedrawings. All documents mentioned herein are hereby incorporated intheir entirety by reference.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

The invention and the following detailed description of certainembodiments thereof may be understood by reference to the followingfigures:

FIG. 1 depicts components that cooperate in a mobile media platform.

FIG. 2 depicts an embodiment of a consumption profile in a mobile mediaplatform.

FIG. 3 depicts an alternate embodiment of the embodiment of FIG. 2.

FIG. 4 depicts mobile media delivery mode switching.

FIG. 5 depicts differences between unicast and multicast/broadcastdelivery.

FIG. 6 depicts a unified TV mobile media environment.

FIG. 7 depicts data flow to support mobile media delivery modeswitching.

FIG. 8 depicts advanced encoding/transcoding.

FIG. 9 depicts automated tagging in a mobile media platform.

FIG. 10 depicts automated tagging with web content.

FIG. 11 depicts automated tagging with content discovery.

FIG. 12 depicts automated tagging with location information andintelligence.

FIG. 13 depicts automated tagging with advertising.

FIG. 14 depicts pause and resume in a mobile media platform.

FIG. 15 depicts an RTSP proxy for pause and resume.

FIG. 16 depicts mediation and settlement in a mobile media platform.

FIG. 17 depicts data flow of mediation and settlement.

FIG. 18 depicts live content sourcing.

FIG. 19 depicts notification.

FIG. 20 depicts mobile media integrated in email communications with amobile device.

FIG. 21 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 22 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 23 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 24 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 25 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 26 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 27 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 28 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 29 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 30 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 31 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 32 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 33 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 34 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 35 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 36 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 37 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 38 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 39 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 40 depicts an aspect of an administrator user interface.

FIG. 41 a mobile media encoding flow with metadata files.

FIG. 42 functional modules of a mobile media platform.

FIG. 43 depicts mobile media distribution portals.

FIG. 44 depicts content flow to mobile media distribution portals.

FIG. 45 depicts advertisement fulfillment.

FIG. 46 depicts encoding data flow.

FIG. 47 depicts pre-encoding data flow.

FIG. 48 depicts distributed encoding/transcoding.

FIG. 49 depicts a user interface for pause and resume.

FIG. 50 depicts a deployment of a mobile media platform.

FIG. 51 depicts data flow elements of the embodiment of FIG. 50.

FIG. 52 depicts a production flow of the embodiment of FIG. 50.

FIG. 53 depicts a content agent sequence diagram

FIG. 54 depicts a block diagram of an encoding process for theembodiment of FIG. 50

FIG. 55 depicts a video encoding lifecycle for the embodiment of FIG.50.

FIG. 56 depicts a deployment of the mobile media platform acrossgeographies.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The invention may incorporate a multi-tenant platform which may supportmultiple content providers, mobile operators and the like within asingle hosted environment. The platform may integrate or includeintegration with multiple billing systems, such as mobile operatorbilling systems, third party payment processors and the like.

The applications and services of the platform may be hosted in a clientserver infrastructure which may meet or exceed the standards that allmedia companies expect for protection of their assets. The platform maydeliver various mixtures of entertainment information, video, audio,images, photos, and personalizeable, community oriented, socialnetworking content. The platform may include best practice digitalrights management (DRM) for mobile delivery.

The platform may facilitate a short time to market for media companiesand/or other content providers, enabling them to capitalize on theirinventories of content assets as well as fostering new content assetsthat are specifically created for the mobile environment. The platformmay facilitate management of content, storefront and video platformofferings as well as creation of next generation multi-platformservices. The platform may operate in a shared risk, shared rewardbusiness model. The platform may enable mobile content, commerce andculture. The evolution of mobile services may mirror that of theInternet. A similar pattern is happening with mobile Internet services,but in a much more compressed time frame. The platform may facilitateand assist media companies, carriers and others navigate the mobileinternee's transition from content to commerce, and ultimately toculture.

Referring to FIG. 1, the mobile media platform 100 may include aplurality of segments, functions, and components. Segments may providean overarching coverage of inventive concepts, and include consumptionprofiles 102, advanced encoding and transcoding 104, automated contenttagging 108, unicast-multicast-broadcast seamless switching 110,mediation and settlement 112, pause and resume 114, and the like.Functions may represent some of the major functional groups within themobile media platform 100, and include ingestion 118, content delivery120, storage 122, reporting 124, and the like, where advanced encodingand transcoding 104 also may represent a major functional group withinthe mobile media platform 100. Components may represent some of theplurality of other functions and services available within the mobilemedia platform 100, and include content 128, web content 130, hosting132, optimization 134, combining data and metadata into a single file138, a user interface 140, notification-message-alert 142, contentdiscovery 144, location information and location intelligence 148,social networking 150, personalization 152, e-commerce 154, rightsmanagement 158, business models 160, administration 162, advertisement164, security 168, billing 170, integration 172, architecture 174,purchasing 178, games 180, distribution and channel applications 182,platform users 184, and the like.

A consumption profile 102 may represent an ability to automate, optimizeand tailor delivery of content over a network. In an embodiment, anetwork may include a wireless network. A consumption profile 102 mayallow for characteristics, such as device characteristics, networkcharacteristics and the like, rules, such as operator rules and thelike, user preferences and the like, location characteristics and thelike, date-time characteristics, content restrictions and the like to beapplied. A consumption profile 102 may allow the platform to match upcontent, with devices and users over the network. The consumptionprofile 102 may take into account static and dynamic information, asdescribed herein. The consumption profile 102 may be used to determinethe manner in which content is presented and delivered to the end user,including by impacting ingestion 118, encoding/transcoding 104,delivery, search, recommendations and personalization, including forcontent delivery, targeted content, including ads, as well aspermissions and the like. The consumption profile 102 may interact withand be implemented within a distributed architecture. The consumptionprofile 102 may be used with tagging 108 and to enable snacking behaviorin which the end user consumes short audio and video clip content, aswell as consumption of long-form content such as full length movies andthe like. In certain embodiments, tagging 108 may be used to enable thesnacking behavior. The consumption profile 102 may allow foroptimization given limited screen real estate.

Referring to FIG. 2, a mobile media platform 100 may include aconsumption profile 102 which may include a device profile 202, userprofile 204, network profile 208, encoding profile 210 and contentprofile 212, each as described more fully herein. Referring to FIG. 3, amobile media platform 100 may include a plurality of consumptionprofiles 102. As an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 may bepluralized. Many consumption profiles 102 may be pre-configured for amobile media platform 100. A consumption profile 102 may take the formof a number of combinations of rules that together form the presentmentand best quality of service delivery to the user. Through awareness ofthe environment, a consumption profile 102 may be selected for use.

The consumption profile 102 may encompass the encoding profile, asdescribed herein. The consumption profile 102 may encompass the deviceprofile 202, as described herein. The consumption profile 102 may takeinto account variations in input file types and supported file types.The consumption profile 102 may encompass the network profile, asdescribed herein. The network profile 208 may include informationregarding network usage rules, maximum bandwidth, IP addresses and thelike. The consumption profile 102 may encompass a location profileincluding current and historical and future predicted locationinformation and location intelligence 148. The consumption profile 102may encompass current and historical and future predicted date-time andcontent restrictions profiles and/or information.

The consumption profile 102 may take into account and/or impact the userinterface. In an embodiment, the consumption profile 102 may impact thesliders, menus, polls and the like included in the user interface 140.The consumption profile 102 may take into account location information,as described herein. The consumption profile 102 may also take intoaccount user preferences, as described herein. The consumption profile102 may aggregate and/or take into account any of the characteristics,factors and the like discussed herein.

A consumption profile 102 may represent an ability to automate, optimizeand tailor content delivery and may be related to a device profile 202.A consumption profile 102 may reference a device profile 202, mayinclude aspects of the device profile 202, or may include a plurality ofdevice profiles 202. A consumption profile 102 may take into accountdevice features that may be included in a device profile. Devicefeatures may be determined by looking at a device, such as a deviceconnected to a network. Device features may include, without limitation,screen resolution, network support, media format support, deliveryformat (e.g. streaming, http, and the like), and any hardware orsoftware aspect of the device (e.g. memory size, browser softwareversion, and the like). A device profile, and device features may bedetermined from a device user agent profile xml document, such as aprofile that complies with UAProf as defined by the Open MobileAlliance. Accessing a UAProf compliant user agent profile may includereceiving, from the device, a URL identifying a network location of theprofile. To facilitate creating and maintaining consumption profiles102, a registry of user agent profiles or device profiles 202 may beestablished by the platform for each device. A user agent profile may becombined with a unique identifier for a specific device, such as adevice serial number, to further facilitate establishing and maintainingconsumption profiles 102.

The registry of device profiles 202, such as a registry of UAProf, maybe structured to facilitate consumption profile 102 generation andapplication. The structure may include rule sets, decision trees,relational databases, and the like. The structure may provide supportfor application level configuring of the mobile media platform 100 toconform to a consumption profile 102. In an example, available contentmay require a minimum display size. The media platform may use thedevice profile 202 registry rule set to quickly determine if theavailable content may be delivered to the device. A content provider maybenefit from a structured registry of device profiles 202 by identifyingcombinations of features that may facilitate the content providerpreparing content that is readily delivered to the device. A deviceprofile 202 component of a consumption profile 102 may be beneficial inthat standardization of mobile devices may be lacking.

A consumption profile 102 may be related to a network profile. Aconsumption profile 102 may include one or more network profiles 208, oraspects of one or more network profiles 208 that may affect consumptionby devices connected to the network. The platform may define networkprofile 208 aspects that may be included in the consumption profile 102.Alternatively, the platform may convert network provided profile aspectsto a platform preferred format. Converting network provided profileaspects may allow the converted data to be used across a plurality ofconsumption profiles for devices on the network. Network profiles 208may be different for different wireless network technologies.Consumption profiles 102 may need to reflect these differences to bestutilize the network technologies. Each wireless network technology mayprovide different capabilities that may affect consumption by devices.Operators of networks may have preferences for which of the features andcapabilities associated with a given network technology they enablethrough their network operations. Although a network technology maysupport a particular capability, the network operator may not want toprovide this particular capability or may restrict the capability tocertain users, such as users who pay a premium for the capability. Inthis regard, a consumption profile 102 may include network technologiesand network operations rules as part of a network profile. Therefore aconsumption profile 102 may abide by or enable enforcement of networkusage rules by including the network profile. In an example, aconsumption profile 102 may include requiring bandwidth sharing if thenetwork operator or carrier indicates any one user cannot use the entirenetwork bandwidth capability. In another example, network operators mayidentify maximum file size limits for files being delivered over thenetwork. This limitation may result in a file size maximum identified inthe consumption profile 102 that is smaller than that which could besent over the network technology and smaller than the connected devicecould support.

A network profile 208 may communicate to a consumption profile 102 othernetwork operator or carrier rules, preferences, and guidelines such asnetwork preferred display resolution. A single preferred resolution maybe included in a network profile 208 or a plurality of preferredresolutions may be communicated to the consumption profile 102.Bandwidth demand on a network may vary and therefore the consumptionprofile 102 may include parameters by which the platform may determinewhat portion of the bandwidth to utilize. In an example, networkbandwidth available for advertisements during a peak period may belimited more than during non-peak periods. The consumption profile 102may include network peak period constraints so that media contentdelivery may conform to the changing constraints. In an example, anetwork operator may impose constraints on file size during peak periodsand the platform may recognize the change in constraints from theconsumption profile 102 and therefore adjust delivery accordingly.

Other factors that may be included in network profiles may also beincluded in or impact the consumption profile 102. These other factorsmay guide the fulfillment of objectives of the platform and facilitateoptimal utilization of the network capabilities. In an example, cost ofbandwidth may be another factor. Cost of bandwidth may be represented bycost per kilobyte of data delivered over the network. To achieve a costobjective of the platform such as the aggregate cost of bandwidth, theplatform may self-limit bandwidth usage based on the cost of thebandwidth. In another example, the factor may be IP address and IPaddresses for certain locations may be subject to rules that differ fromthose applied to other areas. The consumption profile 102 may alsoassist with selecting among various networks that may be available. Inan embodiment, the consumption profile 102 may help with the selectionamong the following networks for consumption of media on a mobiledevice: operator cellular based, wireless broadband, wirelessnarrowband, short range limited bandwidth (such as bluetooth) and thelike.

The consumption profile 102 may represent abilities of a mobile mediaplatform 100 that encompass various capabilities of networks anddevices. The consumption profile 102 may represent a union of mobiledevice features and limitations with network features and limitations.The consumption profile 102 may represent an intersection of the mobiledevices and the network. The consumption profile 102 may alternativelyinclude all devices features and all network features, including devicefeatures not yet supported by the network, and network features not yetsupported by the device, thereby creating a highest common featuredenominator associated with platform. The highest common featuredenominator may be established from a network profile, a device profile,or a combination, such as a network profile 208 and a plurality ofdevice profiles.

A combination of a device and a network may be uniquely associated witha consumption profile 102. Such a unique combination could facilitateautomatically setting the device, determining an encoding scheme,selecting or generating a consumption profile 102, and the like. Theunique combination of a device and a network may further facilitateidentifying the features of the combination such that the features maybe automatically applied to generate a consumption profile 102. In anexample, a uniquely identified device, such as may be determined byquerying the device on a network, may support display features that canbe associated with the network profile 208 to enable delivery of highresolution content. A consumption profile 102 may exist for this uniquedevice/network combination. To utilize the relevant consumption profile102, the device display features may be automatically enabled throughthe network and content may be managed to comply with the consumptionprofile 102, thereby enabling the delivery of high resolution content tothe device over the network.

Automatically setting or adapting a device may be facilitated by acomprehensive adaptor mechanism that may support a variety ofconfigurations of devices, networks, content, and the like that may beavailable now or in the future. A comprehensive adaptor mechanism mayalso identify a device on a network that may support content availablefor delivery, such as by matching up the aspects of the availablecontent with relevant aspects of the device profile. Based on theresults of the match-up, the comprehensive adapter mechanism may signalthe device, such as through the network, to adapt the phone settings toenable receiving the available content. In an example, if content isavailable for delivery over a network in a specific encoding and adevice on the network is identified to include features that support theencoding, the comprehensive adapter mechanism may interact with thedevice to enable the features that support the encoding of the availablecontent. A beneficial match-up may be tagged 108 as a rule thatrepresents a content profile. The rule may be provided to a device andwhen the device re-enters the network, the relevant features can beactivated to facilitate receiving delivery of the content.Alternatively, the rule may be applied during content delivery ratherthan being embedded in the device. The comprehensive adapter mechanismmay match up content with devices, users, locations, time of day and thelike.

A consumption profile 102 may determine factors associated with deliveryand presentation of content. The factors may be related to features ofthe mobile media platform 100, such as ingestion. The impact of aconsumption profile 102 on ingestion may include affecting what contentis ingested 118, how the content is ingested 118, ingestion frequency,ingestion preferences, ingesting the same content from multiple sources,and the like. A content profile 212 may be generated from theconsumption profile 102 that may be used as a template for contentsourcing, ingestion 118, and creation.

A consumption profile 102 may impact what content is ingested so thatthe platform may preferably ingest content that is compatible with theconsumption profile 102. Because the platform may only ingest contentthat is compatible (or can be adapted to be compatible) with currentlyapplied consumption profiles 102, different content may begin beingingested when a suitable consumption profile 102 is applied. Aconsumption profile 102 may impact how content is ingested. In anexample, content ingestion may be adjusted based on the availableresolution of a device associated with a consumption profile 102. If ahigh resolution device connects to a network being serviced by theplatform, the associated consumption profile 102 may indicate to theplatform to ingest high resolution content for delivery to the device. Aconsumption profile 102 may impact how often content is ingested.Ingestion frequency may be based on aspects of the consumption profile102, such as how many concurrent devices are utilizing the consumptionprofile 102. Ingestion preferences may be impacted by a consumptionprofile 102. A consumption profile 102 preference for small video clipsmay impact the ingestion preferences so that small video clips areingested for delivery to devices to which the consumption profile 102 isapplied. Content may be available for ingestion from a plurality ofsources and there may be differences among the sources that relate toconsumption (e.g. resolution). A consumption profile 102 that supportshigh resolution may be applied when a high resolution device connects toa network serviced by the platform so content that is being ingestedfrom a low resolution source may be complemented with the same contentbeing ingested from a high resolution source. A consumption profile 102could interact with a content delivery network to instruct on the mostideal source location for delivery of the content.

Encoding and/or transcoding 104 may be impacted by a consumption profile102. Encoding may target a consumption profile 102 to facilitatedelivery to devices to which the consumption profile 102 applies. Aconsumption profile 102 may manipulate the content via encoding 104 sothat encoded content conforms to the consumption profile 102 contentdelivery requirements. A consumption profile 102 may relate encodingwith content availability so that content that is not available in anencoding compliant with the consumption profile 102 may not be visibleto the user. Such content may not appear in search results.Alternatively, the content may be indicated as available but notviewable through the user device. The consumption profile 102 mayidentify alternatives for presenting content that is not available inthe applicable encoding. In an example, the consumption profile 102 mayindicate that text from the content be delivered. In another example,the consumption profile 102 may indicate an alternate encoding, such asa composite type that may be partially compatible so that at least someof the content may be presented to the user. The user may be presentedwith an option to move to another alternate encoding 104 to view contentthat is incompatible with the encoding indicated by the consumptionprofile 102, such as by transcoding 104 the content. The user may notnotice an automatic change defined by a quality of service level policyand the like. The user may be charged an additional fee for this option.The user profile 204 that may be associated with the consumption profile102 may include preferences or restrictions associated with such anoption. These restrictions or preferences may be related to parentalcontrols, blocking techniques, fee limits, monthly charge limits,content rating, and the like.

A content encoder 104, such as an encoder 104 of the mobile mediaplatform 100 may include the consumption profiles 102 to facilitateproviding encoded content that meets the consumption profile 102requirements. A method of getting an encoding 104 ready for consumptionmay be impacted by the consumption profile 102. Encoding required by theconsumption profile 102 may require specific tools to be applied to thecontent to provide the encoded format. An identification of the requiredtools, methods, and the like may be included in a consumption profile102 so that an encoder may determine which tools to use.

Encoding prioritization may be impacted by consumption profiles 102 inthat encoded content may be stored and forwarded to network operators sothe content may be readily available when needed to be delivered.Encoding 104 may be performed on an on-demand basis based on aconsumption profile 102. The platform may determine encoding 104required at time of request based on conditions of the device, networkenvironment (such as type and bandwidth), decoder format available ondevice and the like.

A consumption profile 102 may indicate support for real time delivery soa source that provides real time encoded content may be associated withthe device to facilitate delivery of real time content.

The consumption profile 102 may impact delivery. Delivery may beoptimized for mobile consumption as may be determined from theconsumption profile 102. Optimizing factors may be based on aconsumption profile 102 such as factors that vary for each individualapplication of a consumption profile 102. Each individual application ofa consumption profile 102 may represent an individual usage session withfactors associated with it such as location, user preferences, time ofday, available network bandwidth, and the like. Other factors associatedwith a consumption profile 102 that affect delivery include deviceplayback capabilities, device content delivery mechanism support,content digital rights management regime, content characteristics, andthe like.

A consumption profile 102 may contain device capabilities and the devicecapabilities may impact delivery optimization. Device audio and videoplayback capabilities may require specific CODECs to facilitateoptimized delivery. To optimize delivery the consumption profile 102 mayidentify device attributes that may vary from device to device such asscreen size, color depth, memory, CPU power, content receiving methods,network support, bandwidth support and the like.

A consumption profile 102 may identify one or more delivery methodssupported by the network and device to which the consumption profile 102is being applied. Delivery methods such as streaming, download,progressive download, MMS, WAP push, and the like may be associated withan application of a consumption profile 102 and therefore may impact themethod of delivery.

The consumption profile 102 may have an impact on search andrecommendations. Search may be impacted in that results returned from asearch may be constrained to content that may be delivered in compliancewith the consumption profile 102. One or more search terms may beautomatically inserted in a user search query to automatically limit thesearch to compliant content. Alternatively, search results may be postfiltered or ordered based on the consumption profile 102. Theconsumption profile 102 may impact search and/or recommendations basedon user preferences or other data that may be related to the user, auser profile, a device profile, a network provider, and the like. In anexample, a search for Orioles, Cardinals and Blue Jays requested by asports fan who may subscribe to sports content packages may be impactedby the consumption profile 102 associated with the user, so the searchresults are ordered and/or filtered so that results related to sportsteams (e.g Baltimore Orioles, Saint Louis Cardinals, Toronto Blue Jays)appear ahead of general results related to birds. The consumptionprofile 102 may include the additional search terms. The consumptionprofile 102 may include a redirection to a search engine that optimizessearch results for the device and network associated with theconsumption profile 102. Recommendations, such as may be provided from arecommendation engine, may be impacted by the consumption profile 102 sothat the recommendations adhere to any limitations included in theconsumption profile 102. In an example, a recommendation for viewing apresidential candidate debate may be different for a device with limitedvideo display capability or bandwidth than for a device with high speedbandwidth. The consumption profile 102 may include guidelines,preferences, and requirements that may be provided to a recommendationengine for making recommendations.

A consumption profile 102 may be associated with tagging. Tagging mayinclude tagging content, keywords, metadata, and the like. A tag mayinclude a reference to one or more consumption profiles to which thetagged content complies. A consumption profile 102 may include one ormore tag IDs that identify content supported by devices and networks towhich the consumption profile 102 applies. Tagging 108 may be analternate for identifying within a consumption profile 102 each type ofcontent that complies with the profile. A tag may combine contentattributes, such as encoding 104, resolution, and the like so that thetag can be examined to quickly determine if the content complies withthe consumption profile 102. A consumption profile 102 may include alist of valid tagging methods, such as RSS.

The consumption profile 102 may be used with tagging and to enablesnacking behavior in which the end user consumes short audio and videoclip content, as well as consumption of long-form content such as fulllength movies and the like. In certain embodiments, tagging 108 may beused to enable snacking behavior.

The consumption profile 102 may be linked to level-driven encoding 104based on quality of service and may be linked to the user's presence andavailability and preferences relating to the user's presence andavailability. Level-driven encoding 104 may involve adjusting andaffecting the encoding process in order to achieve certain levels orvalues for certain parameters. In an embodiment, a parameter may beframes per second and the resolution and sampling rate of the encoding104 may be varied to ensure a certain minimum frames per second evenduring periods of network congestion or across slower regions of thenetwork.

The consumption profile 102 may take into account file types, such astypes of files that may be delivered to a device. A consumption profile102 may include a list of supported file types that may meet one or morenetwork or device profile 202 requirements. Alternatively, file typesmay be parameterized based on device profile 202 features to facilitateeasy cross reference of file types to device features. A list ofsupported file types may facilitate determining the applicability of anewly provided file by providing a readily accessible mechanism forcomparing the file type of the new file to the list of supported filetypes. A new file type that includes parameters that match a minimumnumber of parameters of supported file types may be determined to besupported and may be added to the list. In an example, a new file typethat is encoded such that the encoding is not supported by networkeddevices associated with the consumption profile 102 may only need to betranscoded 104 to be included in the supported file type list. A filetype that is not supported may require different ingestion 118parameters or processes to be supported by the consumption profile 102.A consumption profile 102 supported file type list may include standardfile types that may be identified by their extension, such as .mp3,.wav, .mov, and the like. File types that may be supported may include,without limitation, 3GPP (MPEG4 Level 0/Level 1 and H.263 video codecswith AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AAC audio codecs)—mobile video transport format;AVI (RAW, MPEG1/2/4 and Huffman codecs)—Audio Video Interleave format;WMV/ASX/WMA (v.7, v.8., v.9)—Windows Media format; M2A, M2V, M2T, M2P,M1A, M1V—MPEG1/2 streams format; MOV (Sorenson codec)—QuickTime videoformat; WAV (PCM, 16 bit, 8 bit, 8-48 kHz)—Uncompressed audio filesformat; AMR, MP2, MP3, AAC, AIFF, OGG—Compressed audio files format; andBMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG—Image files format. By using standard extensions, aconsumption profile 102 may be configured to support all .mp3 files.Delivery protocols may include HTTP, RTSP, RTP, MMS and the like. In analternative example, a consumption profile 102 may identify a .mp3 fileas supported only when it is encoded 104 with a preferred encoding bitrate. A consumption profile 102 may impact a user interface of a deviceto which the consumption profile 102 is being applied. The consumptionprofile 102 may include user interface parameters that a device mayapply to a user interface. When a consumption profile 102 is beingapplied to a device, the device may automatically adjust the userinterface to comply with the user interface parameters of theconsumption profile 102. Parameters may impact any aspect of the userinterface, such as sliders, menus, polls, screen usage, and the like.

A consumption profile 102 may include rules associated with locationinformation about a device connected to a mobile network. Location rulesincluded in a consumption profile 102 may facilitate taking broadcastrights into account. In an embodiment, the consumption profile 102 mayenable blackout zones for a sporting event. For example, mobile deviceswithin 60 miles of an arena may be not be permitted to receive videofrom a sporting event occurring in the arena, unless the event is soldout. The restriction may be enforced by the platform through transcodingso that video content or composite content that includes video of theevent may be delivered without the video component. Location informationin connection with a consumption profile 102 may be associated with thepause and resume functionality of the platform. In another embodiment,location information concerning another device may be used to impact thecontent delivered to the user's device. For example, if a user is outwith his wife near dinner time, advertisements concerning nearbyromantic restaurants may be delivered to the user's device. In anotherembodiment, proximity information may be used to delivery ads or othercontent, such as to promote local businesses. A consumption profile 102may include a user preference to deliver content associated with deviceswithin a certain proximity to the user's device. In an example, a useragreeing to meet someone for drinks may receive content, such as frompublic information sources, about the person when the devices are withina predetermined proximity A business may enforce consumption profilesfor devices provided to employees so that confidential information isnot presented to a device that is outside a security area of thebusiness. The consumption profile 102 may identify a plurality ofsecurity areas, such as remote offices, a home office, a headquarters,and the like.

Broadcast rights may be supported by a location based aspect ofconsumption profiles 102. A user within a broadcast area may receivecontent from a local source when the device is determined to be within abroadcast range of the local source. In an example, a user may view aNew York Yankees game through a local affiliate in Portland Me. when theuser is in the broadcast range of the affiliate. Likewise, the same usermay receive the NY Yankees game through a San Francisco affiliate whenthe user is in broadcast range of that affiliate. In this way, localbroadcast rights may be maintained as availability of content expands.

Consumption profiles 102 may be associated with device location basedtechnology. A consumption profile 102 associated with a user who uses adevice with GPS, compass-based, or cellular based location technologymay take advantage of the technology. In an example, a device with GPSbased location technology may receive content based a direction ofmovement of the device. As a user with the device walks along a street,the consumption profile 102 may direct content gathering to acquirecontent related to places or people that the user may come upon locatedin the vicinity of the direction of the user.

Preferences, such as user preferences, may be included in a consumptionprofile 102, and may facilitate the platform complying with thepreferences. Applying a consumption profile 102 may result inpreferences that are defined in the profile being automatically applied.Preferences that may be included in a consumption profile 102 mayinclude user preferences, cost caps, content item fees, monthly costcap, fee cap on bandwidth, and the like. Preferences may beautomatically enforced by the platform so that cost cap preferences arecarefully monitored to ensure costs are not exceeded. In an example auser may specify preferences associated with media video quality. Theuser may prefer high quality videos and low quality advertisements, highquality sports, medium quality news, and the like. In another example, auser preference, such as maximum download or transfer time may beconfigured in a consumption profile 102 and, when applied, may determinedelivery method selected. If a cellular network download would exceedthe preferred maximum download time, then the download may be performedthrough a wireless broadband connection. In an alternative embodiment,the user may be prompted and offered the option of performing thedownload for an extra charge or as part of an upgraded subscription.User preferences may include favorite actors, sports, sports teams,artists and the like.

A content profile 212 may be derived from a consumption profile 102. Acontent profile 212 may identify aspects of content that relate todelivering content to a device to which the consumption profile 102 isbeing applied. Aspects of content that may be in a consumption profile102 that may be useful in identifying content may include content type(including, without limitation, long form, short form, advertisements,talking head, sports and the like), metadata, content analysis, contenttag, content ingestion process, content encoding and the like. Theprofile of content may be determined from one or more of the aspectsdescribed above.

A consumption profile 102 may be associated with use cases. Use casesassociated with a consumption profile 102 may include a user experiencewith a carrier, an application, a video service model, providing contentto a carrier, delivering content in any network condition, and the like.A user experience associated with a consumption profile 102 may berelated to a carrier so that a user experience that is tied to a carriermay be attributed to the consumption profile 102. Parameters associatedwith the carrier and included in or related to the consumption profile102 may determine aspects of the user experience, such as user interface140, access to network capabilities, content availability, and the like.A user may experience unacceptable performance if a carrier hasestablished bandwidth limitations for the user or the user's device typein a consumption profile 102 being applied by the mobile media platform100.

A consumption profile 102 may be associated with an application. Anapplication may require device features that may be specified in theconsumption profile 102. Content, such as interactive content, mayinclude one or more applications or may require one or more applicationsto be operating on a device to access certain features of the content.The consumption profile 102 may be adapted to include appropriatereference to applications so that content that requires the applicationsmay be sourced and delivered to the device. A consumption profile 102may identify applications that enable features of a device, such asbroadband access. Through identification of such applications, theconsumption profile 102 may facilitate automatically configuring adevice. In an example, when a device first connects to a network, thedevice may be queried to determine the most appropriate consumptionprofile 102. The carrier may automatically configure the device throughthe network to support the network and delivery features associated withthe consumption profile 102 to provide the best user experience whileconnected to the network. The carrier may apply a consumption profile102 that provides premium features at no charge to a new user on thenetwork, such as during a free trial period.

A consumption profile 102 may be associated with a video deliveryservice. A video service may utilize consumption profiles to determine avideo delivery model that would comply with the consumption profile 102.The video delivery service may utilize the consumption profile 102 toincrease market share by making their video delivery service availableto all uses associated with the consumption profile 102. A consumptionprofile 102 may include a directory of video services that deliver videocontent that complies with the profile so that a user of a device towhich the consumption profile 102 is being applied, may utilize thedirectory to select one or more video delivery services. An advantage ofsuch an approach is the device user does not have to review videoservice device and network requirements when searching for and selectinga service.

A consumption profile 102 may be associated with providing content to acarrier. A carrier may need to balance user wants of always best qualityand always being available. One approach to providing the best qualitymay be for the carrier to always apply the best consumption profile 102.To balance availability the carrier may apply an alternate consumptionprofile 102 that may support adapting delivery based on networkbandwidth constraints. In an example, an alternate consumption profile102 may facilitate ensuring a video advertisement is delivered—as a highresolution video when bandwidth is available, as a low resolution videowhen bandwidth is limited or as a pop-up banner advertisement instead ofa video when network quality is low. A banner advertisement may includetext, a static image, a dynamic image, active content, and the like. Aconsumption profile 102 may be associated with viral sharing of content.In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 and/or user profile 204 mayinclude destinations and other users for sharing of content. Thedestinations and users may included portals, communities, friends,families, business connections and the like.

A consumption profile 102 may be associated with primitives, composites,and marketing types. The platform may be adapted to facilitate deliveryof each type of primitive which may be identified by the consumptionprofile. The consumption profile 102 may also identify which compositeform to deliver from a plurality of composite forms of contentavailable. By determining primitive related aspects of the network andthe device from the consumption profile 102, the platform mayself-select content composite form, generate or form the primitives, anddeliver them to a device in a manner that is no different than accessingthe content on the web.

A consumption profile 102 may be associated with tagging. Tagging 108may include tagging content, keywords, metadata, and the like. A tag mayinclude a reference to one or more consumption profiles to which thetagged 108 content complies. A consumption profile 102 may include oneor more tag IDs that identify content supported by devices and networksto which the consumption profile 102 applies. Tagging 108 may be analternate for identifying within a consumption profile 102 each type ofcontent that complies with the profile. A tag 108 may combine contentattributes, such as encoding, resolution, and the like so that the tagcan be examined to quickly determine if the content complies with theconsumption profile. A consumption profile 102 may include a list ofvalid tagging methods, such as RSS.

A consumption profile 102 may be associated with network switching.Network switching may be seamless, may occur while delivering content,may be required to deliver content, may require minimum device features,and the like. A consumption profile 102 may include rules, guidelines,and conditions for how to deal with switching among networks. Aconsumption profile 102 may include associations of networks to contenttypes to facilitate determining which network to switch to for receivingdelivered content. A consumption profile 102 may indicate criteria forswitching networks so that switching networks occurs seamlessly to theuser. Switching from a mobile carrier network to a broadband mobilenetwork to receive content may occur automatically based on therequirements identified in the consumption profile. The consumptionprofile 102 may indicate to the mobile media platform 100 the networksto which the device can be switched so that the platform may select thecontent source based on the network support. In an example, a devicethat supports both cellular and WiFi networks may be served through aconsumption profile 102 that indicates the device can support bothnetworks. The mobile media platform 100 may determine to send contentover the cellular or the WiFi network based on various conditions,rules, and the like. If the mobile media platform 100 determines thatthe WiFi network is not acceptable due to cost, availability, and thelike, then content suitable for delivery over the cellular network maybe sourced and delivered to the device.

A consumption profile 102 may indicate user preferences associated withnetwork switching. Network switching may result in charges being imposedon a user, so a user may establish preferences in the consumptionprofile 102 regarding network switching to adhere to a cost goal orbudget. Because certain features (e.g. VoIP) may only be available byswitching networks, a consumption profile 102 may indicate userpreferences that impact access to the features and therefore impactnetwork switching. A consumption profile 102 may indicate a minimumlevel of service quality to be provided across the supported networks.Service providers may determine the network and equipment needed toprovide the minimum level of service and thereby decide to support theconsumption profile.

A consumption profile 102 may indicate the network technologiessupported by a device, such as cellular (GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS,CDMA, CDMA 1X, EV-DO and the like), WiFi, WiMax, uwb, Bluetooth,MediaFlo, DVB-H, DMB and the like.

The mobile media platform 100 may enable, include and/or be associatedwith a mobile content provision service that combines an on-demandunicast or multicast cellular mobile content service with a mobilebroadcast content service. In an embodiment, the content may be videoand television. For example, the content provided using unicast ormulticast may be video content and the content provided using broadcastmay be televisions, resulting in the combination of broadcast andunicast mobile TV services. Throughout content may be discussed as videoand/or television possibly under the name Mobile TV, but is understoodto be any of the content types, from any of the content sources and withany of the content parameters discussed herein. In addition, in certainembodiments unicast may be discussed; however, it is understood thatunicast may be replaced with multicast or the like.

In this manner, a user using a mobile device may be able to switch 110between unicast/multicast content and broadcast content, which, incertain embodiments, may correspond to switching 110 between on-demandcontent and broadcast television content. The broadcast content may belinear programming and/or live programming. Technologies for deliveringcontent, such as television, to mobile devices via broadcast may includeMediaFLO, DVB-H, DMB, ISDB-T, DVB-T, DVB-SH, a cellular broadcast overan upgraded network, a separate wireless broadcast network and the like.Technologies for delivering content, such as on-demand video, to mobiledevices via unicast/mulitcast include 3.5G cellular networks, 4Gcellular networks, WIMAX, HSDPA, EV-DO, EV-DO rev A, CDMA, WiBro,FLASH-OFDM, cellular unicast over an upgraded network, a separatewireless broadband network and the like. Delivery of content may beaccomplished by sideloading which may involve a user selecting anddownloading content in a wired web session on their PC or similar deviceand then transferring the content to their mobile device. Delivery ofcontent may be accomplished by downloading in off-peak hours. In anembodiment, long form content may be downloaded to a mobile deviceduring off-peak hours when network traffic may be sufficiently low toallow increased video traffic without voice service degradation. FIG. 4depicts a possible embodiment of this service. In this embodiment theapplication on the mobile device may be a mobile TV application and theservice and application in combination may allow the user to switchbetween the content provided via broadcast and the content provided viaunicast/multicast.

Unicast, multicast and broadcast methods, among others, may be used toenable mobile content delivery or mobile TV. Mobile TV may include aservice that delivers video to a mobile device. Mobile TV may beunicast, multicast and/or broadcast. Mobile TV may involve various userconsumption methods, such as on-demand and linear programming. In anembodiment, mobile TV content may be delivered via a unicast network,whereby video is streamed over a cellular network in which there is aone to one relationship between the transmission source and thereceiver. In an embodiment, video content may be delivered viabroadcast. In a broadcast service, a single radio signal may betransmitted to a potentially infinite number of receivers. Viewers whoare tuned in to a specific channel may see the same video programsimultaneously.

In an embodiment, content for an on-demand service may be sourced in theform of pre-recorded clips. In an on-demand service, a user may selectthe content and play of the content commences from the beginning of theclip. Both broadcast and unicast mobile TV services may provide theability to select content on an on-demand basis to a certain degree. Ina linear programming service, a user may tune in to a channel inprogress, and joins the program at the point at which the program onthat channel is currently being played. Linear programming content isgenerally sourced from either live terrestrial TV channels andretransmitted intact over the mobile TV service as a simulcast or it maybe constructed as a loop of a series of pre-recorded clips concatenatedtogether to form a longer duration set of content that is repeated overtime. Both broadcast and unicast mobile TV services may deliver linearprogramming. In an embodiment, linear content may be delivered aschannels over a broadcast network, and personalized, timely on-demandcontent may be delivered over a bi-directional one-to-one unicastcellular network. In an embodiment, the user may not notice anydifference in how content is delivered. The user may have a single userinterface 140 (such as an integrated TV client) on a mobile device toaccess all content. A unicast network may provide access to a catalogueof long-tail content, and the one-to-one nature allows for delivery ofpersonalized, targeted content. Broadcast networks may be complementaryto unicast networks: they efficiently deliver the same signal to a largenumber of users simultaneously, and therefore may be well-suited todelivery of short-head content, both long format and short format. In anembodiment, using a combination of unicast and broadcast networks canoptimize network capacity and investments.

FIG. 5 depicts a possible programming line-up for a combined unicast andbroadcast service. Traditional multi-channel video services with baseand premium tiers may be delivered over the broadcast network, providingthe majority of the short-head content. Extended video services providelong-tail content from niche producers and user-generated contentpossibly through a video on demand service that includes clips and nichelinear channels not provided via the broadcast portion of the service.This programming line-up may reflect an on-deck vs. off-deck strategy,in which on-deck content is limited to only the most popular content(such as short-head content), while the long-tail content can be managedand delivered without the operator's involvement. In an embodiment, thecontent may be audio content. For example, broadcast audio content maybe radio and unicast content may be particular songs, interviews orradio programs. In an embodiment, the content may be data. In anembodiment, the content may be data as part of a datacasting service fortraffic, weather, emergency info and the like. In an embodiment, thecontent may be clips. For example, a clipcasting service may push asmall set of video clips to a mobile device for subsequent viewing ondemand. In an embodiment, network technologies may includepoint-to-point cellular, cellular broadcast, mobile broadband, mobilebroadcast technologies and the like.

In a certain embodiment, a user watching a mobile broadcast of a linearlive sporting event program is provided with a link to view pre-recorded5 minute video clip of an interview with the player who just scored agoal. The video of the interview would be served up on-demand over thecellular network when the user clicked the link. After viewing the clip,the user could be provided other links to allow them to choose from alist of other content that is available on either the broadcast orcellular networks, or the user could choose to resume viewing theoriginal broadcast. In this way, the “short-head” broadcast content canbe used as a driver for users to discover “long-tail” on-demand content,and vice-versa.

Mobile TV may also provide and/or be associated with browsing,recommendation and search functionality for on-demand pre-recorded clipsand broadcast TV to allow for discovery of current and upcomingbroadcast programming. This functionality may also extend to anycontent, including content that has been recorded on a home ornetwork-based PVR or the phone's PVR. The platform may include and/orenable PVR-like capabilities in which the broadcast content is bufferedon the device so that the user can choose to resume viewing where theyleft off, or go back to the program in progress. In an embodiment, theservice may allow picture-in-picture display where the on-demand clipand the live game are on the screen at the same time, and the user canswitch between the two via a single click.

In an embodiment, a user interface for mobile TV may be presentedthrough a unified mobile TV client application on a mobile device. Theclient may be enabled by server-side functionality provided by theplatform. The user interface 140 may include an EPG similar to thetraditional grid of linear TV, or it may be less linear and similar to astreaming content portal. The user interface 140 would allow a user toseamlessly move between content via broadcast and via unicast without anoticeable change in the user experience. The user may be able todirectly browse and select linear and on-demand content.

In an embodiment, the mobile content provision service may providerecommendations for other associated content that encompasses both thebroadcast and unicast content universes. A user will be able topersonalize their experience by setting preferences that includefavorite linear channels and programs, favorite on-demand categories,favorite genres, areas of interest, notification settings and the like.The service may deliver targeted ads to the user based on a number offactors, including the consumption profile, their demographic info,their preferences, their location, location intelligence, usage history,operator and device type. In an embodiment, ads may be delivered asclips for inclusion as interstitials. Delivery could be via unicast,allowing very specific targeting, or with less granularity via theclipcast/datacast mechanism of broadcast networks

In an embodiment the service may provide targeted links to allow theuser to browse to sites related to the content being viewed. Inembodiments, the links may allow users to purchase related content orgoods and services via operator or third party storefronts. Inembodiments, the service may include community interactionfunctionality, such as recommend to a friend, send to a friend, userrating and the like. In embodiments the service may include contentlocalization functionality to facilitate restriction of delivery ofcontent to specific areas. For example, local news and weather reports,targeted ads based on location, as well as for implementing contentblackouts of broadcast programming. Content search and discovery mayspan across unicast and broadcast content, facilitated using metadata.In embodiments, the service may also include protection controls whichmay control access to content. This functionality may grant or restrictaccess to certain services based on specified criteria. In an example, auser may be granted access to a particular channel or category for aspecified period of time based on the amount of content the userpurchased. Content protection may also apply to usage rights that areapplied after the content has been delivered and determine how a pieceof content may be used according to specified conditions andconstraints.

FIG. 6 depicts a general implementation of a specific embodiment of acombined unicast and broadcast service. It is understood that this isonly one specific embodiment and that other implementations arepossible. All connections and arrows in the figure may flow both waysand elements may be connected even though not depicted in the figure.FIG. 7 depicts another general implementation of a specific embodimentof a combined unicast and broadcast service. It is understood that thisis only one specific embodiment and that other implementations arepossible. All connections and arrows in the figure may flow both waysand elements may be connected even though not depicted in the figure. Inthis embodiment, the on-demand service delivery platform may manage theon-demand content, ingest the content, and perform encoding andtranscoding. In this embodiment, the unified mobile TV service deliveryplatform may perform the unified EPG, broadcast/on-demandsynchronization, cross-promotion, content targeting, ad targeting,device management, content localization, preference management,discovery, recommendation, personalization, DRM enforcement, pricing,service bundling, billing integration, subscription management,authentication, authorization, accounting functionality and the like.

The platform may contain an application that combines on-demand deliveryof video over a cellular network with live television broadcast contentthat is delivered over a mobile broadcast technology, such as DVB-H,DMB, MediaFLO or the like, together into a single user experience. Inone embodiment, a user watching a mobile broadcast of a sporting eventmay be provided a link to view a pre-recorded video clip that covers thehighlights of the game to that point. Clicking the link may result inthe application switching video delivery sources from the mobilebroadcast network to the cellular network and causing the highlightedvideo clip to be streamed on-demand to the user via the cellularnetwork. After viewing the clip, the users could be provided other linksto allow them to choose from a list of other content that is availableon either the broadcast or cellular networks. In another embodiment, theapplication may simultaneously source content from various networksand/or external repositories and integrate the data from these varioussources in order to provide the user with a high quality experience.Additionally, the content sourced from various networks and/orintegrated repositories may be related to the interests, whetheraccumulated or point in time, of the user. This may reduce or remove aneed to search on the mobile handset. This process may result ineffectively increased bandwidth.

Advanced encoding and/or transcoding 104 may be based on architecturethat facilitates supporting real-time encoding and/or transcoding 104 ofcontent while also supporting cost effective and space efficientencoding and cataloging of content for later retrieval by a mobiledevice 802. A mobile media platform 100 may be associated with advancedencoding and/or transcoding 104 by at least aspects of theencoding/transcoding 104 architecture. An advanced encoding and/ortranscoding 104 architecture may include pipelining and paralleloperation of certain features to reduce encoding latency. A pipelineoperation may allow content to be serially loaded into a first encodingstage while each subsequent encoding stage may receive a first output ofthe first encoding stage while subsequent content is serially loadedinto the first encoding stage. The process may be repeated for a thirdand a fourth encoding stage so that latency from when the first contentis serially loaded into the first encoding stage to the first contentbeing serially delivered out of the last encoding stage is minimized. Anadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 architecture may also supporton-the-fly encoding wherein content is encoded using one or moreencoders with different encoding schemes when it is either presented tothe platform or when it is accessed within the platform for delivery tonend user. Architecture techniques such as caching may also facilitatereduced latency and therefore may improve user perception of a mobilemedia platform 100.

The platform may be associated with an advanced encoding/facility 104.The advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104 may include ingestion 118of external content. Ingestion 118 may be automatic; it may beself-aware ingestion 118; it may include encoding 104; it may includetagging 108; and it may include various combinations, such as automaticingestion 118 and encoding 104.

An advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104 may manage content thathas been ingested by a self-aware ingestion module 118. The self-awareingestion module 118 may perform ingestion 118 automatically for anycontent type and for any content format. Self-aware ingestion 118 maybring content into the platform in a format that is useable by theplatform such as QAR format or RSS feed format. The self-aware ingestionmodule 118 may be part of the advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104or it may communicate with the advanced encoding/transcoding facility104 to deliver content to be managed. Self-aware ingestion 118 mayfacilitate normalizing content so that content from any type and anyformat may be normalized, such as through recoding and formatconversion, into a format useable by the platform and/or the advancedencoding/transcoding facility 104. Encoding, recoding, and transcoding104 may be performed by the self-aware ingestion module 118.Alternatively, the self-aware ingestion 118 capability may be anattachment to an encoding process of the platform so that ingestion 118and encoding 104 may be operated under separate constraints.

A self-aware ingestion 118 process may function as a web service or mayfunction analogously to a web service. It may include encoding 104and/or publishing capabilities, or may enable such capabilities in theplatform based on the availability of content. In an example, aself-aware ingestion 118 module may automatically act on new contentwhen new content is available such as through a content feed, searchcapability, content posting, and the like.

A self-aware ingestion 118 process may determine automatically how toact on any content. Self-aware ingestion 118 may be performed based onthe content, metadata associated with the content, aspects of thecontent source, encoding 104 of the content, format of the content,attachments to the content, and the like. Self-aware ingestion 118 maydetermine what encoding, recoding, transcoding 104, format conversion,filtering, and the like is needed based on ingestion 118 parametersassociated with the advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104 and/orthe platform. In an example, a self-aware ingestion 118 module maycompare the encoding of newly presented content to a representation ofencoding supported by the advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104. Ifthe newly presented content is in an encoding that is supported by theadvanced encoding/transcoding facility 104, then no recoding may beperformed. If the newly presented content is in an encoding that is notsupported, the self-aware ingestion 118 module may order recoding froman attached encoding facility before directing the content to theadvanced encoding/transcoding facility 104. In another example, aself-aware ingestion 118 module may determine that a transcoding processexists to recode newly presented content from it's presented encoding toa preferred encoding. In such a situation, the self-aware ingestion 118module may perform the transcoding to present the content in thepreferred encoding.

An advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104 may perform self-awareingestion 118 based on a trigger, such as content being deposited into alocation known to the advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104. Alocation may include a directory, an FTP site, an RSS feed indicatingnew content, an email received with the content or with a link to thecontent, an email with an attachment containing the content, an address(URL, port, and the like) to which content is streamed, an address (URL,port, and the like) to which a notice of content availability is sent,an external scheduler that may be linked to a guide such as TV guide,and the like. A location may be location external to the platform, maybe internal, or may be a handoff between modules of the platform, suchas between the advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104 and theself-aware ingestion 118 module.

Self-aware ingestion 118 may be performed on externally supplied ordiscovered content, or it may be performed on content already knownand/or managed by the advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104. In anexample, the advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104 may managecontent that is stored in an encoding that is not compatible with adevice to which the advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104 desiresto publish the content. The advanced encoding/transcoding facility 104may signal the self-aware ingestion 118 module to retrieve the contentand take any action necessary to prepare it for compatible publicationto the device. The self-aware ingestion 118 process may determine whatencoding is present, what encoding is desired, what transcoding isnecessary, and may perform or direct an encoding facility to perform theaction.

Referring to FIG. 8, advanced encoding/transcoding may encompass anencoding architecture 804, encoding formats 808, encoding profiles 210,dynamic encoding 104, self aware ingestion 118. Advancedencoding/transcoding 104 may also relate to advertising 164, locationintelligence 148, consumption profiles 102, content discovery 144, tags108, content profiles 212, distribution 182, and devices 802.

Self aware ingestion 118 may use an encoding profile 210 to determinewhat action to take on content that it is aware of. Actions associatedwith self-aware ingestion 118 may be based on device characteristics 802such as device players, codecs, device screen size, display color depth,pixel resolution, device memory size, device processing power, and thelike. Actions associated with self-aware ingestion 118 may be based oncharacteristics associated with a network through which the device andthe platform communicate, such as network type, network speed, networkbandwidth available for delivery of the content, and the like.Similarly, self-aware ingestion 118 may be based on device operatorcharacteristics that may include content use rules, policies, bandwidthrestrictions, content restrictions, and the like. Contentcharacteristics may at least partially determine what actions may beassociated with ingesting content by a self-aware ingestion 118 module.An example of content characteristics that may impact self-awareingestion 118 is content motion type. Ingestion 118 of talking head typecontent may be performed by a self-aware ingestion 118 module verydifferently from ingestion 118 of live action, sports, movies,advertisements, and the like. To perform ingestion 118 of talking headcontent may require less processing power, and therefore may reducecommunication bandwidth. A self-aware ingestion 118 module may signalsystem resources accordingly such as to optimize system resourceutilization.

Aspects of a delivery method associated with the content may alsodetermine what actions and resources a self-aware ingestion 118 modulerequires for ingestion 118 of the content. Delivery methods may be basedon content type because delivery methods may be different for a livelinear source than for a clip linear source. Additionally live lineardelivery may be broadcast type delivery, unicast type delivery,multicast type delivery, and the like. Clip linear delivery may be basedon a unicast type delivery. If the intention is to store the content,such as in a database associated with the platform, and deliver thecontent at a future scheduled time, the self-aware ingestion 118 modulemay take actions to ingest the content into storage at this time andtake additional actions to retrieve the stored content and ingest itusing other actions for delivery at the delivery time. In this wayencoding profile 210 factors that take into account static and dynamicfactors may be used by enhanced encoding/transcoding 104 and self-awareingesting 118 processes.

Enhanced encoding/transcoding 104 may also be associated with self-awareencoding and/or transcoding of content, such as video content. Similarlyto self-aware ingestion 118, self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may beautomatic. Automatic self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may be based atleast in part on a consumption profile 102 as herein described.Automatic self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may be based on contentavailability, aspects of the available content, acquisition of thecontent, mobile device 802 acceptance and/or support of tagging format,tagging 108 related to the content or metadata associated with thecontent, and the like. A self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 capabilitymay impact content acquisition and detection. A content manager withself-aware encoding/transcoding 104 capability may acquire or detectcontent in a wide variety of formats and types that may be readilytranscoded by the self-aware encoding/transcoding module.

A selection of carrier rules may be impacted by self-awareencoding/transcoding 104. Similarly, self-aware encoding/transcoding 104may be impacted by a selection of carrier rules.

Other benefits of self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 include contentlinks can be syndicated such as an RSS feed, and content may becomposite content. Based on attributes of the composite content, aself-aware encoding/transcoding 104 module may select one or more ofencode, transcode, deliver, and the like when presented with compositecontent.

Self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may transcode and deliver on demand,removing the need to have storage of multiple encoded versions of afile, saving on disk storage. Delivery formats may be based on what therequesting client supports.

Self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may provide benefits when used withtime sensitive content and may be based on the time sensitivity of thecontent. In an example, breaking news may be immediately encoded,whereas other news reports may be encoded only when encoding bandwidthis available.

Self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may also facilitate optimization ofingestion 118. Encoding may be time shifted or prioritized to optimizeaspects of ingestion 118 such as bandwidth, processing power, detection,acquisition, and the like. Self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may alsofacilitate managing and/or prioritizing actions over multiple CPUS. Suchadjustments associated with self-aware encoding/transcoding may beperformed automatically.

Self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may be based on a schedule. Theschedule may be an ingestion 118 schedule. In an example, ingestion 118may be performed as content is available, but encoding/transcoding 104may be performed on the ingested content based on a schedule forencoding. A self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 schedule may be based onresource utilization, carrier demand, and the like. Theencoding/transcoding 104 may be scheduled across multiple CPUs.

Enhanced encoding/transcoding 104 associated with self-awareencoding/transcoding 104 may also be associated with job management.Automatic actions, which may be considered natural actions of aself-aware encoding/transcoding 104 process, may be based on contenttype. Through job management, encoding/transcoding 104 may be scalableto support greater throughput, faster response time, higher complexityof content, more sophisticated transcoding 104, and the like. Jobmanagement may be combined with a scheduler to further improveencoding/transcoding 104 associated with a self-aware encoder. Encodingjob management may also provide benefits associated with distributedcomputing, such as workflow processing. An encoding job may be managedso that various computing facilities may act on the content as it flowsthrough a workflow associated with the job. Workflows may includevarious aspects of enhanced encoding/transcoding 104 including elementsranging from content creation through ingestion 118 and distribution182. Workflows may also be represented graphically, such as with aprocess graph and may incorporate user specified parameters. Workflowsmay embody constraints associated with ingestion 118 optimization,resource utilization, encoding preferences, and the like that aself-aware encoding/transcoding 104 module may access to process contentthrough workflows.

Content profiles 212 may also be used by a self-awareencoding/transcoding facility 104 to determine a type of content andtherefore determine what actions to take. Content profiles 212 mayidentify aspects of content that a self-aware encoding/transcodingfacility 104 may analyze, such as metadata, content type (e.g. talkinghead vs. live action), content tags 108 and the like.

Self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may also be characterized by takingconsumption profile 102 factors into account. Consumption profile 102factors such as network characteristics, features, and capabilities;device characteristics 802, features, and capabilities; and userpreferences, and the like may be considered. In an example, userpreferences associated with video quality may be considered such thatencoding/transcoding 104 ensures that video is encoded to provide highquality rendering, whereas advertisement 164 may be encoded to onlysupport low quality rendering. Sports may be encoded for high qualitywhile movies may be encoded for medium quality to satisfy displayrequirements, user preferences and balance network, other resourcerequirements and the like.

Encoding actions associated with a self-aware encoding/transcodingfacility 104 may be directed toward the network. In embodiments,encoding actions may be optimized for network and operatorcharacteristics, including network speed, bandwidth and other factorsdescribed herein. In an embodiment, content may be pre-encoded forshifting between network speeds, such as to EVDO and 1x and back. Themobile media platform 100 may, generally, be associated with encodingand transcoding 104. In particular, content ingestion 118 may includevarious encoding and transcoding 104 features and capabilities as hereindescribed. The following is an overview of various aspects ofencoding/transcoding 104 that are described in association with variousother aspects of the invention elsewhere herein. Encoding may beperformed for a distribution 182 network type, for a device type, for adelivery method, may support various encoding formats 808, may beembodied variously, and the like.

Encoding for a distribution 182 network type may include optimizing fornetwork and operator (e.g. wireless service provider) characteristics orrequirements such as network speed and bandwidth (e.g. dynamic based ontime of day), or pre-encoding to facilitate shifting between variousspeed networks (e.g. EVDO to 1x, 1x to EVDO, and the like) that may beencountered throughout the distribution 182 network.

Encoding actions associated with a self-aware encoding/transcodingfacility 104 may be directed toward the device. Encoding for deviceaspects 802 may include consideration of screen size, content type,video quality (such as corresponding to talking head, sports, musicvideos and the like), audio capabilities (such as corresponding to thehuman voice, music and the like), color depth, audio/videosynchronization, file type, device memory, CPU, device processing poweror type, operating system, and the like. In an example a device may besuited for human voice audio output (e.g. a basic mobile phone), so thataudio encoding of high fidelity music may be adjusted to gain the bestquality of sound from the device. Encoding for a device may includeencoding based on a device attribute such as screen size, color depth,memory, CPU, operating system, and the like. Device targeted encodingmay be based on an association of content with the device type. Deviceencoding may be based on video type (e.g. talking head, sports, musicvideo, advertisement, document), audio type (e.g. human voice, music),device file type, and the like.

Self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may be directed toward encoding fora delivery method. Delivery methods such as streaming, download,progressive download, MMS, WAP push, and the like may each impactencoding in different ways. A self-aware encoding facility may adjustencoding based on the delivery method.

Encoding, and in particular self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 maysupport a variety of encoding and content formats. A self-awareencoding/transcoding 104 module may support one or more of theseformats: 3GPP (MPEG4 Level 0/Level 1 and H.263 video codecs with AMRNB,AMRWB, AAC, ACC+ audio codecs)—mobile video transport format; H.264, AVI(RAW, MPEG1/2/4 and Huffman codecs)—Audio Video Interleave format;WMV/ASX/WMA (v.7, v.8., v.9)—Windows Media format; M2A, M2V, M2T, M2P,M1A, M1V—MPEG1/2 streams format; MOV (Sorenson codec)—QuickTime videoformat; WAV (PCM, 16 bit, 8 bit, 848 kHz)—Uncompressed audio filesformat; AMR, MP2, MP3, AAC, AIFF, OGG—Compressed audio files format;BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG—Image files format; and the like.

A self-aware encoding/transcoding facility 104 may be embodied as aMEncoder, an FFMPEG encoder, an MP4Box encoder, and the like.

Enhanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with automatedingestion 118 in combination with encoding. Automated ingestion 118 andencoding may facilitate detecting and acquiring content from sources ofvarious quality. Automated ingestion 118 and encoding may facilitateacquiring, tagging, encoding, and packaging any digital format contentfor distribution 182 to any mobile device 802. Acquiring content may bedone through polling third party sites for content. The various thirdparty sites may contain widely varying content formats that may bereadily supported by automated ingestion 118 and encoding. Formats suchas video, audio, images, text, and the like are examples of content thatmay be managed by automated ingestion 118 and encoding methods. Contentmay be submitted or obtained for automatic ingestion 118 and encodingvia an interactive web portal, an FTP upload (push or pull), a WebService API, and the like.

Encoding may be embodied in one or more encoding architectures 804, suchas a flexible content encoding system that provides identical (butautomated) ingestion 118 capability to the mobile media platform 100,but is extensible and scalable for the future. It may be built upon amodular component system that leverages a tree-like data structure and anormalized object model to provide consistent interfaces across manyservices such as collection, encoding, validation, and publication.

Automated ingestion 118 and encoding may be based on a scalablearchitecture 804 that enables handling a broadening number of incomingcontent clips and producing an even broader number of uniquely encodedclips for delivery. Automated ingestion 118 and encoding may referencedevice profiles, network profiles, consumption profiles 102, contentprofiles 212, and the like to identify and execute ingestion 118 andencoding actions.

Encoding may be a part of ingestion 118 or may be done separately.Encoding may be based on criteria that are unrelated to ingestion 118.Automated ingestion 118 combined with automated encoding may open orcreate new standard acquisition methods. It may also facilitaterepurposing non-mobile ready content for mobile use thereby turning thenon-mobile content into a more valuable digital asset.

A mobile media platform 100 associated with automatic ingestion 118 andencoding may relate to existing standards such as RSS. Automaticingestion 118 and encoding may be compatible with existing standards.Methods and actions associated with or resulting from automaticingestion 118 and encoding may provide material that may be added tostandards, such as acquisition focused standards. Standards mayfacilitate content generation being acquisition friendly/focused.However, an automatic encoding/transcoding 104 process that supportsdiverse content formats and types may impose no new minimum constraintson content providers while offering opportunities to enhance standardsrelated to content generation, encoding, delivery, and use.

A mobile media platform 100 associated with automatic ingestion 118 andencoding may work beneficially with a standard such as RSS. The platformmay provide methodologies and/or tags 108 for using RSS to feed contentbased on consumption profiles 102, content profiles 212, deviceprofiles, user profiles, and the like. Consumption profiles 102 and thelike may be useful in defining content to be acquired. Attributesrelated to profiles may be added to content generation and delivery ontop of any attributes or specifications associated with using RSS. Suchattributes may enable content providers to direct content by making thegenerated content RSS feedable to mobile user.

RSS may also facilitate using tags 108 to enable auto ingestion 118 andencoding. RSS tags 108 may be related to publishing. Tags 108 may alsobe related to content lifecycle. Ingestion 118 may consider tags 108related to content lifecycle to determine, for example, how long contenthas been available. Other actions associated with content lifecycle tags108 may include when to stalemate it, when to publish it, when it waspublished, when to remove it, when to delete it, when to archive it andthe like. Tags 108 may be used during ingestion 118 and encoding and/ormay be passed through ingestion 118 and encoding to be used by downstream resources. In an example, a tag associated with content lifecyclemay be passed through ingestion 118 and may be stored in associationwith the ingested content. At a subsequent encoding activity, such as ascheduled encoding activity, the content lifecycle tag may be used todetermine what actions to take. If the content lifecycle tag indicatesthe content is no longer valid (e.g. it may be past an expirationdate/time), the content may not be encoded.

RSS may facilitate device profiling in association with automatedingestion 118 and encoding. Using RSS features may allow the mobilemedia platform 100 to facilitate directing content to specific devicetypes 802. The mobile media platform 100 may take advantage of existingcontent definition and may allow an expansion of RSS standards to applyto content primitives.

Automated ingestion 118 and encoding may support composite contentthrough enabling encoding directed toward each portion of the compositecontent. In an example, news content may be a form of composite contentin that it may include images, text, video, audio, all of which may besynchronized. Because news content may need to be delivered to a devicethat may have capabilities that affect each composite content type,encoding for text may require an encoding process that delivers encodedtext that is targeted to the device and may be different than theencoding that delivers video targeted to the device capabilities. Amobile media platform 100 may be capable of expanding composite contentsupport, such as to support further composite attributes. In an example,a mobile media platform 100 may use primitives to extract more benefitfrom composite content types, such as in the ingestion 118 and encodingprocesses.

On-demand encoding and transcoding 104 may be associated with the mobilemedia platform 100. On-demand encoding and transcoding 104 may be usedwith live linear, audio and video clips, large content databases withsmall disproportionate usage, and the like. Pre-encoding content withsmall usage may not utilize the platform resources for storing encodedcontent efficiently or cost effectively so such content may be sourcedand encoded/transcoded on-demand. ON-demand encoding and/or transcoding104 may be used to deliver the content to the user device as well asgenerate a pre-encoded version to be stored for later access. On-demandencoding may be useful for large content libraries and remote sources.Generally on-demand may provide at least medium quality output using asingle pass encoder. Generic encoding may efficiently performed byon-demand encoding/transcoding 104. A hardware architecture 804 foron-demand encoding may yield very high performance with minimal latency.Such an architecture 804 may be readily scaled through a server based,modular computing environment that may support a high degree of encodingconcurrency. Low and moderate content access frequency or high andsporadic requests may be handled by on-demand encoding.

ON-demand encoding allows the platform to rely on the content sourceserver to host the content. In an example, a user may direct a request(e.g. search) for content to the mobile media platform 100 that causesthe platform to gather the content from the content host server storage,ingest, encode, and deliver the content to the user device. Example ofhosts may include AOL, youtube, news sites, tv and broadcast cablesites, and the like. Another example involves creating an applicationthat directly interacts with a content provider's website (e.g. AOL) topresent a mobile version of the content provider's site. A user wouldbrowse, search, and display details of the content provider's assetsdirectly from the website, but would request the content through themobile media platform 100. The platform would obtain, transcode, andcache the requested content from the content provider site whilstfeeding the mobile device 802 through a live or cached stream.

On-demand encoding may be used with raw content that is stored (e.g.hosted) on the mobile media platform 100 (e.g. encoding host) instead ofcontent stored on a content source host server. In another example, acontent provider, such as AOL would bulk download content to establish abase of content that may be encoded on-demand. Updates and additions tothe available content would be downloaded as it becomes available. Themobile media platform 100 may encode the downloaded content and host itlocally, making it available to all platform services (e.g. search,personalization, and the like). An on-demand encoding mechanism wouldfurther reduce the latency between the time new content is downloadedfrom AOL, and the time it is available for distribution 182.

Pre-encoding of content may be beneficially applied in a mobile mediaplatform 100 content serving environment. Content may be encoded intopopular encodings, such as encodings based on consumption profiles 102of users currently connected to the network or currently requestingvarious content to be encoded. Pre-encoding facilitates easier and morerapid response to requests for content. However, pre-encoding usuallyentails several sequential steps. These steps may perform multi-passencoding that increases the quality substantially over single-passencoding. The time to encode may depend on the load, quality, processingrequirements, and the like, but may be slower than needed to supportreal-time encoding. In an embodiment of multi-pass sequential encoding,outputs of a previous encoder are daisy-chained to the inputs of a nextencoder resulting in a delay before the encoded file is available forconsumption. To reduce latency associated with sequential encoding,while achieving equivalently high quality, successive encoding stagesmay be configured in a pipeline such that the output of a first encoderis fed to the input of a second, so that encoding in each encoder is offset by a small amount of time, allowing most of the encoding to is runin parallel. The total latency may then approximate the sum of thelatencies of each encoder from the first block read in to the firstblock written out. The total latency may readily facilitate real-timemulti-pass encoding. To yet further improve latency from content accessto consumption, a live linear encoding may be run in parallel with themulti-pass encoding to allow the content to be available through thelive linear encoder even before the entire content is pre-encoded. Oncethe entire content is pre-encoded, subsequent requests for the contentcan be delivered from the higher quality pre-encoded content.Pre-encoding may consume greater computing resources than single passlive on-demand encoding so the platform may queue up pre-encoding jobsand allocate off-peak time for executing the jobs, thereby reservingcomputing power during peak time to on-demand encoding.

Pre-encoding may be used for small to moderate sized content libraries.Pre-encoding may result in high quality and high resolution encodingusing a multi-pass encoding method. Although a hardware architecture 804can support pre-encoding, it may be efficiently performed by a generalpurpose processing environment using software encoding algorithms.Pre-encoding may improve mobile media platform 100 resource utilizationfor high demand content. A pre-encoding method may scale through a modelbased on resource prioritization, bulk encoding, regular scheduledencoding, and the like.

On-demand encoding may further facilitate in-stream ad insertion forlive linear feeds. Delivery of encoded live linear feeds may be switchedto advertisement feeds while the live linear feed continues to beingested 118, encoded 104, and cached for delivery at the completion ofthe advertisement delivery. Encoding methods may be combined during aconsumption session so that delivery may be separated from encodingmethod. In an example, live linear content may be encoded on-demand andpre-encoded advertisements may be inserted in the delivery stream.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may facilitate distribution 182 oflive linear content with targeted advertisements by distributing aplurality of streams, each with its own advertisement sourcing criteriaand instream ads, to individual users in a unicast distribution 182 orto groups of users in a multi-cast distribution 182. A single livelinear creative content feed may be replicated through encoding andtranscoding 104 into the plurality of delivery streams.

Live linear encoding may be beneficially applied to live content feedssuch as live events, news, and the like. A hardware architecture 804 maybe well suited to deliver live linear encoding due to the high inputrate. An architecture 804 for live linear encoding may be server basedand therefore may scale well through distributed and parallelprocessing. A single live feed may be ingested by a plurality ofencoding facilities and each encoding facility may deliver encodedcontent through unicast and multicast distribution 182.

A mobile media platform 100 may be associated with content relatedtagging 108, as shown in FIG. 9. Content related tagging 108 may includetagging 108 of content 108A, metadata tagging 108B associated withcontent, content container tagging 108C, profile tagging 108D such asconsumption profiles 108E, device profiles 108F, user profiles 108G,content profiles 108H, and the like, and may be associated with deliveryof content to mobile communications facilities 802. Tagging 108 ofcontent may be performed by a mobile media platform 100, such as by anadvanced encoding/transcoding facility 104, a self-aware ingestionfacility 118, a self-aware encoding facility 104, a distributionfacility 182, a delivery facility 120, a content database 122, and thelike. Tagging 108 may be automated. Tagging 108 may facilitate usingrules associated with ingestion 118 to setup encoding 104 and delivery120. Tagging 108 may be used to propagate information related to contentfrom one aspect of a mobile media platform 100 to another aspect of theplatform, to a device, to a carrier, to a network, to a content storagefacility, to a delivery medium, and the like. Tags 108 may be providedthrough a syndication feed medium such as may be defined by RSS. In anexample, tags 108 associated with the mobile media platform 100 may beprovided to a community through RSS. The tags 108 and their associateddefinitions, values, interpretations, and the like may be included in anRSS specification. Tags 108 may be used by a mobile media platform 100to help define the end results of enhanced encoding/transcoding 104 andother content management functions. In an example, a device or themobile media platform 100 may poll a source of content based on tags 108associated with the mobile media platform 100. If a source of contentincludes content with the polled tags 108, then the content may bepulled down to the device or platform. The device may poll a mobilemedia facility and use tags 108 provided by the mobile media platform100 to help select content for the device. The tags 108 provided by themobile media platform 100 may include attributes associated withdevices, users, and the like. Facilities of a mobile media platform 100may tag content 108A based on consumption profiles 108E, user profiles108G, device profiles 108F, and the like so that the content may bedelivered through RSS to devices.

A function that may be associated with content ingestion may includetagging 108 content to establish a uniform basis for identification ofcontent, describing content, and normalizing content with standardformats and descriptors.

Content tagging 108A may include multiple levels of tagging 108 whichmay include tags 108 in a physical file such as source content, encodedcontent, downloaded content, uploaded content, database content, contentattached to an email, message, or other electronic communication, andthe like. A tag 108 may be an explicit component of a file, such asmetadata, a header, an inter-clip identifier, and the like. A tag 108may be an implicit component of a file, such as an image tag 108 in alive linear feed. An image tag 108 may be a placeholder for contentinsertion, such as an advertisement.

Content tagging 108 may be automatic. The mobile media platform 100 mayfacilitate automated tagging 108, tag 108 recognition, decoding,interpretation, utilization, processing, creation, updating, and thelike for content sourced by and/or distributed from the platform. Allfunctions of the mobile media platform 100 associated with tagging 108may be automated. Tags 108 and tagged content 108A may be automaticallyprocessed by ingestion 118, encoding 104, advanced transcoding 104,delivery 120, mediation, settlement, pause and resume, and otherfeatures, functions, and capabilities of the platform. In an example,content may be tagged 108 during ingestion 118 based on relevancy to oneor more mobile user requests for content. Automated tagging 108 may besubject to and controlled by restrictions and/or rules associated withthe tags 108, tagging 108 functions, tag 108 standards, and the like.

Tags 108 may include a name of a content clip, an artist, a genre, acontent provider, a publication date, a file size, and the like. Tags108 may be useful in allowing a content manager 902 to compile an albumof content. In an example, digital music songs may be tagged with analbum name and the mobile media platform 100 may organize the digitalmusic songs so that songs with matching album name tags 108 may becombined. Alternatively, a user may request that the content manager 902discover content with an album tag 108 and deliver the content to auser's device 802 as it is discovered. The tags 108 could then be usedby the device 802, such as a digital music player (e.g. MP3 player) toorganize a play list of the delivered, tagged content 108A based on thealbum name tag 108. Attributes associated with tags 108 may be logicalrepresentations of content or information related to content as hereindescribed.

Composite content may include one or more tags 108 that are associatedwith each type of content within the composite. Also composite contentmay not contain tags 108 that are related to content types that are notincluded in the composite. In an example, composite content that doesnot include audio type content may not include tags 108 that representaudio related attributes. In another example, when content includescomposite content such as news content that includes audio, video, andtext may include audio related tags 108 associated with the audio typecontent.

Tagging 108 may also help address content management 902 challengesassociated with composite content, diverse content types, variousencoding methods, device and delivery network differences, and the like.Tags 108 may facilitate a content management facility 902 in definingcontent in a way that relates to delivery to mobile devices 802 withoutenforcing strict content management 902 methods. Tagging 108 may allow amobile media platform 100 to work with generic content such as media,documents, and the like. Tagging 108 may also allow for light contentdefinitions while supporting a wide variety of content.

A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an extensible model oftagging 108, such as by offering flexibility and allowing continuousevolution of descriptors associated with tags 108. Tag 108 modelflexibility may be supported by tags 108 not being content, but rathertags 108 may characterize content in terms of aspects that are importantto the platform or delivery. As an example, tagging 108 may describeimage size, color depth, and the like within the image file itself.These tags 108 may include descriptors that may be embedded by a cameraacquiring the image and delivering it over a network. Tagging 108 modelflexibility may also support the addition of new tags 108. Tags 108 maybe newly defined as needed or desired to support content management 902and delivery 120. An example of a tag 108 that may be newly defined maybe a camera model number tag 108 attached to image content. As contentis moved from a source throughout a network, instances of the contentmay be tagged 108 to facilitate distributed sharing of content. In anexample, a portable media player 802 may receive a local download from auser's personal computer of content that was delivered from the mobilemedia platform 100 to the personal computer. A content manager on theportable media player 802 may tag 108 the content based on associationsof the content to other content already on the device so that when thenewly tagged 108 content is uploaded to the user's personal computer, itmay include the new tags 108. If the newly tagged 108 content wereingested by a mobile media platform 100 content manager 902, the newtags 108 may be detected, examined, and be included in a knowledge baseof tags 108 associated with the media platform 100.

The platform 100 may maintain tags 108 of significant and representativewords in a media clip. These tags 108 could be used to locate timeplaces and seek commands to return or search for timeline ranges tocontinue playback. Tagging 108 may be used to associate advertisingtargets and provide better relevance of association.

Enhanced encoding/transcoding 104 may support tags 108 provided withincontent, such as a camera model number within an image taken by thecamera. A flexible tag 108 model associated with a mobile media platform100 may allow for such use. A tag 108 may also include basic descriptorsrelated to content, such as is the image a photo, line art, rendering,cut from a video, and the like. In this way, tags 108 may define imagecontent more precisely. A flexible mobile media platform 100 may supporttags 108 that may add content to an item. Some examples may include atag 108 holding text for a thumbnail image, a location of a full sizeimage associated with a thumbnail image, the source of a thumbnail andthe like. For content that may not be directly analyzed, such as binarycontent, tags 108 may be used to provide metadata. In this way tags 108become vehicles for providing support and management of content thatotherwise may be encrypted, or may include text in any language, and thelike.

A content management facility 902 may utilize tagging 108 to representportions of content in different modes. An audio track may be analyzed,the speech or lyrics may be extracted and converted to text, and theresulting text may be added to a tag 108 and attached to the audiocontent. Such an application may facilitate translating content,providing subtitles, supporting closed captioning, and the like. Also,text tags 108 may be analyzed similarly to text content. By building uptags 108 attached to content, the content becomes more readily analyzedand therefore may be more valuable. In an example, an advertiser may paymore to sponsor content that includes certain words such as a vendorname or sports team name. In this example, local news content thatincludes a story about a national sports team may be sponsored byadvertisers who desire for their advertisements to be associated withthe national sports team. The advertising may be automaticallyassociated with the local content so that the local news provider mayreduce costs associated with separately promoting their news broadcaststo acquire sponsors.

In addition to attaching tags 108 to content, tags 108 may be attachedto content metadata 108B, content wrappers 108C, and the like. Themobile media platform 100 may support tags 108 associated with content108A, metadata 108B, wrappers 108C, enclosures 108C, and any otheraspect or element necessary or beneficial in content generation,distribution, delivery, management, use and the like. In an embodiment,a tag 108 may be geo-location data relating to the location at which thecontent was created or to which the content relates. For example, a tag108 may include the longitude and latitude at which a photograph wastaken.

When contrasted with composite type content, tagging 108 may providemore detailed and more extensive descriptions of content than what justa composite type indicator may provide. Tags 108 may further support acomposite profiling process such as to enable transcoding based oninformation in the tag 108, rather than just on the ingested contentencoding format. Tagging 108 may provide descriptions of content in away that is similar to how a news announcer provides descriptions forthe images, video or other content provided to the user along with thenews announcer audio. Tagging 108 may provide the rough equivalent ofcommentary in a sports broadcast. Tagging 108 may also includingfunctional data such as URLs, addresses, contact information, actions,and the like. Tags 108 may include cumulative information such as accesscounts or download counts.

It is envisioned that new tags 108 may be created to facilitate usingthe mobile media platform 100. Tags 108 that support the mobile mediaplatform 100 may include front-end tags 108 (e.g. identify the content),middle-level tags 108 (e.g. functional tags that may direct actionswithin the platform), and back-end tags 108 that may facilitatecustomized user experience. Tags 108 may also link up with otherinformation such as information associated with a user includingdemographics, location, psychographics and the like.

Tagging 108 may provide benefits to content discovery by focusing onways of discovering and acquiring the content. Seeking content based ona tag 108 or a tag value may allow better indexing of content andtherefore may facilitate locating content. In an example, if a user isinterested in receiving content that is certified by a regulatoryagency, the regulatory agency may tag content that it has certified andthe user may direct the mobile media platform to seek out content with acertification tag 108 from the regulatory agency. In this way thecontent may be handled by a secondary filter or targeting facility afterit has been discovered through tag 108 searching. The agency may alsouse the mobile media platform 100 to seek out content that includes atag 108 requesting certification. In this way content may be consideredto be finding its own way from a content provider to a destination.

A content management facility 902 may use tags 108 to classify contentinto more descriptors. The descriptors may be tagged 108 withappropriate uses and actions to take with the content.

Tags 108 may themselves contain the purpose of the tag 108 so that tags108 do not need to be predetermined into a limited set of tag types. Apublishing engine may tag 108 content to determine the contentdestination and content routing or delivery systems may identify thedestination tag 108 and thereby make appropriate routing decisions tomove the content to its destination.

Tagging 108 may also facilitate building community through attachingcommunity tags 108 to community designated content. In an example, acondominium association may publish various documents such as a masterdeed, master insurance plan, rules and regulations, meeting minutes,financial statements, association news, bylaws, and the like that may beavailable to the public but is most beneficial to members of theassociation. The content may be generated with an ‘association’ tag 108attached that allows interested members of the public to receive thecontent published by the association.

Mobile media platforms 100 may beneficially utilize and support tags 108to facilitate things like producing text from a soundtrack, accessingcontent descriptors without opening and analyzing the content, targetingnetwork operators, determining aspects of a device on which a recordedcontent was recorded, and the like. By utilizing tags 108 for physicallyrepresenting information relevant to the content, the tags 108 mayprovide descriptions about the content as well as about themselves. Inan example, a tag that identifies content encoding format may allow anautomatic encoding/transcoding 104 module to self-determine what isbeing encoded. Without tagging 108, the encoding 104 may require thecontent to be opened to examine the content or a header of the contentto determine the encoding format of the content.

Tagging 108 may be more broadly applied to facilitate use of usergenerated content and/or code. Certain applications or tools arerequired to handle certain file types (e.g. Excel is required to handlefiles with a .xls extension in the file name). Without knowing the filetype, it may be very difficult to determine which application or tool touse with a file. Tagging 108 the file or tagging 108 the content withinthe file may allow a content management system 902 to identify thecorrect application or tool for each file provided. In an example, atagged 108 file that is tagged 108 with descriptors of the file (e.g.file size, frames per second, bits per second, encoding rate, and thelike) may be more easily handled in a mobile media delivery environmentthan an untagged file. The untagged file may need to be opened andanalyzed to determine the relevant elements for appropriate enhancedencoding/transcoding 104, delivery 120, use and the like.

A mobile media platform 100 may manage content, including adjusting orchanging content, to facilitate delivery of content and use of contentby mobile devices 802. When variables of the user, the device, andcontent related categorization are handled by the platform, tagging 108becomes an attractive medium for robustly handling diverse and broadcontent related information. Operationally, tagging 108 also mayfacilitate matching content being requested to information aboutavailable content that is stored in tags 108 associated with theavailable content.

Referring to FIG. 14, the mobile media platform 100 may include digitalPVR type capability including pause and resume 114 of content 128 beingingested and/or delivered to a mobile user. Such capability may supportresuming a content 128 stream at a point at which it was previouslystopped. Pause and resume 114 capability may also facilitate errorrecovery 1404 that may interrupt playback of content 128 on a mobilehandset. A pause and resume 114 functionality may be network based,thereby facilitating supporting any mobile device 802 without requiringchanges to the hardware or software running on the mobile device 802.Pause and resume 114 may be user initiated 1408, system initiated 1410,and the like. Certain types of content 128, such as long form content128, may benefit from pause and resume 114 functionality in that usersmay be more likely to access long form content 128 knowing that they canpause and/or resume the content 128 so that the entire content 128 doesnot need to be viewed in one session. Pause and resume 114 may supportvarious e-commerce methods 154 that associate content playback with anevent such as payment or advertisement viewing, and the like.

Pause and resume 114 may be user configurable, such as with a userconfiguration facility 1440, and user activated. A user may specifyconditions associated with pause and resume 114 that may be associatedwith a user profile 204 and/or a consumption profile 102. A user mayaccess a pause functionality during content playback through featuresassociated with a mobile device 802. A user may access resumefunctionality when content 128 is accessed through a mobile device 802or other compatible device. In an example, a user may signal thatcontent 128 currently being presented on the user device is to be pausedby pressing one or more function, data, or soft keys 1434 on a mobilehandset. The keys 1434 may be fixed, programmable, or screen based. Whena user accesses content 128, the user may be presented with optionsassociated with the playback of the content 128 including resumingplayback of the content 128 based on a pause related action takenearlier by the user, the mobile device 802, the network, a server, acarrier, and the like.

A device related action may cause a user initiated 1408 pause to requirereestablishing a connection with the paused content 128 to resumeplaying. Device related actions may include battery power being low, aunit turning off due to battery power, a loss of signal, a pause timeoutexceeding a device determined threshold, and the like. A network relatedaction may cause content 128 being presented on a mobile device 802 topause without the user taking any action. A pause associated with anetwork may be based on network bandwidth limitations, duration of asession, signal quality, and the like.

Pause and resume 114 may be algorithm based 1412. Algorithm based 1412pause and resume 114 may be associated with e-commerce 154, advertising,and the like. Content 128 may be provided to a user free of charge andmay play free of charge for a trial duration, such as 30 seconds. At theend of the trial duration, the content 128 may be paused and the usermay be presented with options for resuming the content 128. A user maybe presented with an option of accepting responsibility for a chargethat may be applied to a form of payment or may be automaticallyincluded in their mobile device 802 usage bill (for example). A user maybe presented with other alternatives as well including, withoutlimitation, submitting a form of payment such as through a paymentfacility 1442, agreeing to perform an action (e.g. viewing a commercial,taking a survey, and the like), providing demographic information,agreeing to receive additional content 128 (e.g. advertisements,promotions, and the like), and other alternatives as may be beneficialto the user, the content provider 1402, the network carrier, the mobilemedia platform 100, and the like. In an example, a user may haveavailable a certain amount of credit in a prepaid credit account thatmay be used toward playback of content 128. Content 128 may be playedback until the credit account has insufficient funds to continueplayback at which point the playback is paused. The user may bepresented with an option of topping off the credit account to resumeplayback. Because playback may not be dependent on the user device, theuser may top off the credit account at a later time and resume playbackany time after the credit account has sufficient playback funds. Theuser may use a payment facility 1442 associated with a user interface140 to perform payment transactions.

Algorithm based 1412 pause and resume 114 may be used to pause creativecontent playback so that an advertisement or other sponsored content 128may be presented. Because the algorithm may be based on aspects of thesession, the user, the provider, the advertiser, the carrier, or thecreative content 128, there may be no need to provide specific supportfor advertisements within the content 128 as is typically done. In anexample, creative content 128 may be sourced and it may not include anyspecial tags, markers, intersession breaks, and the like at which timean advertisement may be inserted. Instead, an algorithm, such as aduration of play time between advertisements, may be used to determinewhen to pause the content 128 and present an advertisement.

The mobile media platform 100 may include content 128 review or analysisfunctionality that may facilitate placement of advertisements inassociation with algorithm based 1412 pause and resume 114. In anexample, an algorithm may identify a change of scene in the content 128as an opportunity for pausing the creative content 128 to present anadvertisement. Image analysis methods may be employed to determinechange of scene. An algorithm may further include factors such as a userprofile 204, carrier preferences, creative content provider 1402preferences, advertisement placement demand associated with the creativecontent 128, and the like to determine pause and resume 114 of playbackof creative content 128.

Pause and resume 114 functionality associated with a mobile mediaplatform 100 may include location based factors 148. Pause of livecontent 128, such as performances or competitions, may occur based on alocation of a mobile device 802 displaying the live content 128. In anexample, a blackout area around a live event, such as a sportscompetition, may be established to promote attendance at the event. Amobile device 802 that enters the blackout area during live playback ofthe event may be subjected to the blackout and the playback of the eventmay be paused automatically. Playback may remain paused, so thatplayback does not resume while the mobile device 802 remains within theblackout area. Upon exiting the blackout area, the playback may resume.Alternatively, playback within the blackout area may resume after adelay, such as after the completion of the competition. Other types oflocation based 148 pause may include a mobile device 802 moving outsidea secure zone, such as the interior of a building or a secure property.Certain types of content 128 may be paused based on location of themobile device 802. In an example, display of confidential informationmay be paused when a mobile device 802 is determined to be located in apublic area such as an airport. Playback may be paused based onproximity of the playback device to other devices. Device proximitypause may be useful to limit unauthorized sharing of content 128,preventing unauthorized users from potentially viewing content 128, suchas private content 128, and the like.

Pause and resume 114 may require no client side dependency 1414. Themobile media platform 100 may include one or more network components,such as a server, a streaming protocol server, and the like that maymonitor content 128 delivery to a user so that resuming playback ofcontent 128 may be requested by a user from another device. In anexample, a user may be viewing playback when the battery of the mobiledevice 802 dies, the device disconnects from the network, and theplayback stops. One or more of the network components may detect themobile device 802 disconnection and may effect pausing the playback sothat the user can resume the playback at a later time. The user may turnto a friend or co-worker and use their mobile device 802 to access thepaused content 128. When the user accesses the content 128, the user maybe able to select the paused content 128 for playback starting at thepoint when the user's mobile device 802 battery died. The paused content128 may be made available to the user through a secure login, forexample. For example, a user may pause playback of a video on his in-cardevice via WiMAX and resume viewing playback of the content on his PC orIPTV at home.

Pause and resume 114 may also be used to facilitate managing contentsourcing 1418. Streaming content 128 that is being sourced from a firstcontent source may be paused and upon playback resumption, the content128 may be sourced from an alternate source, such as a preferred source.In this way, a user may select content 128 for playback and the platformmay adjust content sourcing to manage bandwidth, costs, and the like. Inan example, a user may request content 128 and to ensure delivery of thecontent 128 to the user is not delayed, the mobile media platform 100may begin streaming content 128 from the first source detectedcontaining the content 128. However, the platform may determine thatanother source, such as a file repository of the mobile device 802carrier, contains the content 128 and that using the carrier providedcontent 128 would benefit one or more of the user, the carrier, thecontent provider 1402, the platform, a sponsor, and the like. Pause andresume 114 functionality associated with the platform may briefly pausethe playback and switch to the preferred source to resume playback.Alternatively, the platform may not pause playback but instead pauseingestion and seamlessly switch delivery from the first identifiedsource to the preferred source using the methods of resuming playback asherein described. This may be accomplished by the platform identifying apoint in the content 128 at which the ingestion is paused and requestingstreaming of the content 128 from the preferred source at the pausepoint and then seamlessly delivering the content 128 from the preferredsource in sequence with the pause point of the first source. Seamlesstransition from the first to the preferred source may be facilitated bypipelining content 128 from the first source to establish a buffer ofcontent 128 that is accessed until the preferred source playback isavailable.

Pausing and resuming playback may be beneficially applied to short formcontent 128, long form content 128, live content 128, on-line games,video, audio, e-books, multimedia content 128, and any other type andcomposition of content 128 as here in or otherwise disclosed. Livecontent 128 may be buffered, such as in temporary storage, during apause so that playback can be resumed immediately by the user. If thecontent 128 is paused for an extended time, the content 128 may betransferred to more permanent storage to allow playback at a later timewhile reducing platform resources that otherwise may be used fordelivering unpaused content 128.

Referring now additionally to FIG. 15, pause and resume 114functionality may be supported by aspects of the mobile media platform100, such as a Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) handler facility1424. A RTSP handler facility 1424 may include a client RTSP requesthandler 1502 that accepts RTSP requests from a client. The client RTSPrequest handler 1502 may decode the RTSP into a request that a streamingserver will understand. The client RTSP request handler 1502 componentmay also keep track of intended start time per request as well asinformation about the user. It may also translate the response from thestreaming server. A server side RTSP IO handler 1504 may handle basicinput/output operations related to the streaming server. A sessiontracker/monitor 1508 may maintain an in-memory map of the active clientconnections the RTSP handler 1502 is handling. An RTP packet monitor1510 logs the number of bytes transferred per stream per session. Anembedded Derby 1512 is the repository where the RTP packet monitor 1510logs and persists information. In an example, when RTP data packets aretransmitted to a destination (e.g. a mobile device 802), the RTSPhandler 1502 may record the number of bytes transferred per track. Ontermination of a session the RTSP handler 1502 can transmit the totalnumber of bytes transferred. A message-driven bean (MDB) 1422 associatedwith the mobile media platform 100 may receive this byte count and maycalculate the position at which the client stopped viewing the clip.Alternatively, the functionality of calculating stop and resume positionmay be performed by other aspects of the platform including the RTSPhandler 1502, an RTSP proxy 1514, and the like. An RTSP proxy 1514 maybe an open source proxy server that works with the RTSP in multimediastreaming reproduction. Its purpose may be to establish the conditionsof an audio-video streaming session. This protocol may allow a client toremotely control a streaming media server, issuing VCR-like commandssuch as “play” and “pause”, and allowing time-based access to files/livebroadcasts on a server. The streaming data may then be sent over otherchannels using other protocol such as RTP (Real Time Protocol), and thelike.

Pause resume functionality may use a Multipurpose Infrastructure forNetwork Applications (MINA) framework 1420 to help users develop highperformance and high scalability network applications easily. MINA 1420provides various event driven and asynchronous APIs. MINA 1420 maysupport various transports such as TCP/IP, UDP/IP via Java NIO, and thelike. MINA 1420 presents advantages over raw NIO protocol by separating“Networking Code”, “Protocol Codec” and “Business Logic”. MINA 1420 maybe used to form an API over which an RTSP proxy 1514 may be written. TheRTSP proxy 1514 may be capable of accepting requests from RTSP clients,translating, forwarding them to a streaming server, keep track of bytestransferred per session, and the like.

The RTSP facility 1424 may be associated with a consumption profile 102,a user profile 204, a device profile 202 and the like to enhance pauseand resume 114 functionality associated with the mobile media platform100.

Referring to FIG. 16, methods and systems of mediation and settlement112 are herein described. A mobile media platform 100 may be associatedwith mediation and settlement 112.

Content providers 1624, such as creative content 128 owners, arecontinuing to look for new and broader methods of distributing theircontent 128 and for opportunities to further monetize content 128. Inaddition, the number of content providers 1624, dealers, affiliates, andthe like are continually increasing. To facilitate distribution ofcontent 128, such as creative content 128, sponsored content 128,promotional content 128, and the like an increasing number of content128 distributors are offering opportunities for marketing content 128 toend users. Likewise mobile device 1614 service carrier 1682 continue tooffer expanded networks, capabilities, services, and support a wideningarray of device types and features. Content 128 types continue todiversify, essentially increasing the number of different types ofcontent 128 that must be handled by the distributors, the carriers 1682,the devices, and the users.

Within this expanding mobile content 128 service environment, a mobilemedia platform 100 may facilitate a radical change in how content 128 issourced, encoded, combined, distributed, tracked, mediated, financiallysettled, reported, and the like. The user may benefit from the mobilemedia platform 100 in that the user may receive more satisfying content128 at ever lowering costs. Carrier 1682 may benefit from the mobilemedia platform 100 by gaining financial control over the extraordinaryreach of their networks while facilitating a more open mobile content128 distribution and access environment. Creative content 128 owners maybenefit from a mobile media platform 100 by better accounting of theuses of their content 128 and near universal access by all mobile usersto their content 128. Content 128 sponsors, such as advertisers 1684 maybenefit from a mobile media platform 100 by increased flexibility in adserving without compromising ad reach or increasing expense fordistributed but unviewed ads. The methods and systems of mediation andsettlement 112 describe herein may provide these and other benefits.

A mobile media platform 100 may support a very large quantity of anincreasing array of content 128 types that are provided by an increasingnumber of creative and sponsored content 128 owners to carriers 1682that continue to diversify their offerings to end users. Mediation andsettlement 112 may facilitate normalizing the diversities created by thecontent 128 owners, content 128 types, carrier 1682 requirements, anddevice functionality so that content 128 view accounting, tracking, andtherefore business methods associated therewith may be substantiallyimproved. Normalization associated with mediation and settlement 112 mayinclude establishing and maintaining a media data record 1692 that maybe associated with one or more media data events, transactions,interactions, user activity, automated content 128 selection andserving, and the like. Through the use of a media data record 1692,mediation and settlement 112 may allow the business methods toaccurately indicate content 128 distribution related revenue that isshared by each partner, for any transaction (event), for any application(service), at any given time, and based at least in part on anunderstanding of the revenue sharing partners at the time of the eventand each partner's quota in revenue sharing at the time of an eventrepresented by the media data record.

A media data record 1692 may include information associated with amobile content 128 event or events wherein the information may besourced from a wide array of record keeping and accounting systems. Themedia data record 1692 may be a normalization of the various datasources. Media data record sources may include different streamingservers, such as different streaming logs that have varying formats,content 128 order, recording methods, and the like. In an example, amedia data record 1692 may content 128 streaming data that is normalizedfrom data from one streaming server that records a count of packetsstreamed and average time duration of each packet and from data fromanother streaming server that records a start time, an end time, and acount of packets. Both streaming server data records can be normalizedin a media data record 1692 to allow mediation and settlement 112 usingthe one and the other streaming server data. A media data record 1692may include a wide variety of information associated with distributingand playback of content 128, such as mobile content 128. A media datarecord 1692 may include content 128-based information (e.g. owner,sourcing server, sponsor, length, genre, type, encoding, originationdate, modification date, and the like), carrier 1682-based information(e.g. carrier 1682 name, geographic region served, network featuresused, service plan, and the like), user-based information (e.g.demographics, user ID, preferences, and the like), device-basedinformation (e.g. device type, device capabilities and features, statusof battery power, and the like), ad-based information (e.g. ad serverURL, ad cost, ad payment options, genre, target user, ad type, and thelike), and other information as may benefit mediation and settlement 112of mobile content 128 distribution.

A media data record 1692 may include, or may be used to determineviewing of portions of content 128 associated with the media data record1692. Streaming content 128 delivers content 128 to a user devicedesktop or interface so that the user is presented the content 128 as itis streamed to the device. A media data record 1692 may facilitatedetermining, on a packet by packet basis, which portion of the content128 was streamed to the user device and therefore presented to (orviewed by) the user. Therefore even if a user terminates a request forstreaming content 128 after only a portion of the content 128 isstreamed, the mediation and settlement 112 functionality of the mobilemedia platform 100 may determine what portion of the content 128 wasviewed and associate the viewed portion with participants (e.g. content128 owners, advertisers 1684, and the like) represented in the viewedportion to ensure accurate accounting for payment and/or invoicing theparticipants. Referring to FIG. 17, in an example, a user may request toview content 128 that is thirty minutes long, such as in the logicalstep 1702. However, the user stops viewing after only ten minutes, suchas in logical step 1704, by canceling the stream, such as by pressing‘stop’, selecting another function, turning off the mobile device 1614,or closing the top of a two-piece mobile device 1614. The mediation andsettlement 112 functionality may access the mobile media data record1692 and determine the owner or owners of the content 128 streamed inthe first ten minutes, such as in logical step 1710, and take anappropriate action, such as determine a share of revenue from the viewedsegment, such as in logical step 1714, determine payment for viewing ofan advertisement in the viewed segment, such as in logical step 1712,and the like. Mediation and settlement 112 may also make note of content128, advertisements, and the like associated with the unviewed portionof the content 128, such as in logical step 1718, and make thisinformation available to participants for purposes such as marketingresearch, accounting reconciliation, and the like. Revenue share may beallocated across many different participants and may be based on eachparticipant's complex share agreement. In an example, revenue sharesettled through mediation and settlement 112 may result in 10% for eachad that is stitched with streamed content 128, 30% for the carrier 1682,30% for the creative content provider, 10% for an external reference(search, affiliate, and the like), and 20% for an operator or owner ofthe mobile media platform 100.

Advertisements may be streamed to a user device 1614 in coordinationwith creative content 128. Advertisements may be served from a thirdparty ad server 1694 and may be served directly to the user device 1614without being distributed by the mobile media platform 100. In thissituation, the mobile media platform 100 may have determined, based onexamining the content 128 packets being streamed to the user device1614, that an advertisement was served, yet the source of the ad and theowner of the ad may not be directly known by the platform. To facilitatecompletion of the media data record 1692, either the ad server 1694 maynotify the mobile media platform 100 of the request/service of theadvertisement or the mobile device 1614 may report back to the platform100 which ad was served. Alternatively, the information associated withthe ad request and serving may be logged by the ad server 1694 so thatthe log is available to the mobile media platform 100. The informationfrom either the ad server 1694 or the device 1614 may be near real-time,may be posted at a scheduled time, or may be aggregated and madeavailable to the platform 100 based on an aggregation threshold beingreached (e.g. a number of ads served, a cost of ads served, and thelike). Ad serving may be facilitated by using content 128 that includesmetadata as defined by the SMIL standard. SMIL is an example of ad awareplaylisting technology that may allow the mobile media server 1698 orthe user device 1614 player to reach out to an advertisement server 1694to pull an advertisement to be presented to the user. A data collectionagent may be associated with or operated in association with the mediaserver 1698.

The mobile media platform 100 may include a Real Time Streaming Protocol(RTSP) handler 1658, such as an RTSP proxy 1662, that may analyze eachpacket sent to the user device so that an accurate determination of whatcontent 128 was delivered to the user. The RTSP proxy 1662 may alsoanalyze the content 128 to determine if the content 128 is creativecontent 128, advertising, public domain, privately owned, licensed, andthe like to further facilitate generating an accurate media data record1692.

Mediation and settlement 112 may be beneficial to carriers' 1682 effortsto monetize their networks while opening them to additional sources ofcontent 128. Mobile network carrier 1682 typically maintain content 128traffic tracking systems for network management (to manage spikes, andthe like). Mobile network carriers' 1682 tracking systems may notinclude application logic or content 128 analysis capabilities thatfacilitate mediation and settlement of content 128 value and networkfeature utilization with content providers. As carriers 1682 move fromsubstantially closed networks in which they control all of the content128 provided on their networks to open access networks, the mobile mediaplatform 100 may allow the carrier 1682 to measure network utilizationand allocate costs to content providers 1624 as well as sharing inrevenue associated with sponsoring (advertisements) of the content 128.Carrier 1682 may create new business models, new billing plans, and thelike that may be based around accurate measurement of content 128 value,advertisement value, and the like based on viewership of the content128. In an example, a carrier 1682 may sanction MTV to openly delivervideos over the carrier 1682 network. Although the carrier 1682 may notcontrol the content 128 being provided (presumably MTV controls thecontent 128), the carrier 1682 can receive compensation for the use oftheir network based on data in a media data record 1692. In an example,MTV streams a trailer of a new movie to users on a mobile carrier 1682network. The mobile media platform 100 may determine, through mediationand settlement 112, that the trailer is viewed by a minimum number ofusers and the carrier 1682 is notified by the platform 100 so that thecarrier 1682 may debit a planned amount from the promoter of thetrailer. Content 128 that utilizes a network carrier 1682 high bandwidthcapability may be charged differently by the carrier 1682 than content128 that is served using a low bandwidth network. The media data record1692, and therefore mediation and settlement 112 may take factors suchas bandwidth utilization into account when determining an allocation ofrevenues or charges associated with content 128 distribution. Similarly,mediation and settlement 112 may be beneficial to a third partyparticipant of the platform 100 in facilitating settling their portionof the revenue share or costs associated with content 128 distribution.Mediation and settlement 112 may also enable third parties to makeadjustments in their business, such as if they were paying too much, notpaying enough, and the like.

A media data record 1692 may be associated with a mobile content 128transaction such as a usage event, an ad pull, streaming of creativecontent 128, requests for content 128, and the like. A mobile mediaevent may occur substantially within a media player. To facilitatecapturing mobile device 1614 based media events, media players may bedirected to provide input to the mobile media platform 100 based on thecontent 128 provided and the media event. By accepting a stream ofprivately owned content 128, a user may also agree to allow the mediaplayer to report mobile media events such as replay, fast forward, andother events associated with the stream.

Participants may access information associated with mediation andsettlement 112 through a self-care interface 1696, such as a graphicaluser interface, a program interface (e.g. an API), and the like. Aself-care interface 1696 may make information available so thatparticipants may react to information as it is gathered and normalizedin one or more of real-time, daily, weekly, based on a thresholdassociated with mediation and settlement, and the like.

A mobile media platform may be associated with various types of contentthat may be sourced from a variety of sources. Types of content mayinclude audio, video, text, images, photos, applications, games, data,ring tones, wall paper, fonts, hyperlinks, tables, tabular formattedtext, user generated content, media, radio, content primitives,composite content, marketing type content, and the like, and new contenttypes that may continue to be invented and adapted over time that themobile media platform may extend to cover.

Primitive content types may include basic types such as text, images,and the like. Composite content may include a plurality of primitivessuch as a image with overlay text or a video with a soundtrack. Themobile media platform may manage an assembly of primitives as compositetype content. Marketing type content may be various compositeconfigurations that may be associated with market media such as a musicvideo, a news broadcast, and the like. The mobile media platform maymanage an assembly of composite and/or primitives as marketing typecontent. The content may be short form content. Short form content maybe content a user consumes in a single content consumption episode.Short form content may be content consumed during content snackingbehavior. Short form content may be content less than approximately fiveminutes in length. Short form content may include short clips of news,weather, sports, comedy music videos, movie trailers, user generatedcontent, adult content and the like. The content may be long formcontent. Long form content may be content a user consumes over multiplecontent consumption episodes. Long form content may be an approximately20 or 45 minute episode. Long form content may be longer than 5 minutes.Long form content may be comprised of a series of short form content.Long form content may be a movie having a duration of over an hour.Longer format content may include TV shows, movies, live events, such assports, music, and news, and the like.

Content may be short head content which may be very popular content.There is typically a small number of very popular content titlescomprising the short head. After the short head there is typically arapid decline in title popularity, followed by a populous but relativelyunpopular set of titles which have appeal to a relatively smalleraudience, comprising the long tail. In embodiments, catering to theaudience of long-tail content can be as lucrative as catering to shorthead audiences. Content includes all new types of content invented overtime.

Content, such as content associated with the mobile media platform, maybe sourced from a variety of sources. The sources may be associated witha content type, such as a primitive, composite, or marketing contenttype. The mobile media platform may support content sourced from contentowners, content creators, movie studios, television networks,broadcasters, individual content creators, radio broadcasts, pod casts,digital sources, audio sources, mobile carriers, satellite broadcasts,cable, media companies, databases, archives, content programming,content aggregators, files, streaming sources, and the like. A filesource may be static and represent a discrete instance of content.Streaming content sources may generate dynamic real-time content thatmay not be associated with static or discrete instances of content.

Content that may be associated with the mobile media platform mayinclude a wide variety of content and may represent a wide variety ofmaterial including, without limitation, television shows, movies, movietrailers, sporting events, music videos, instrumental videos, news,music, lectures, talk shows, commercials, classic television shows,classic commercials, play lists, electronic programming guides, games,programming languages, markup languages, home movies, documents,transactions, records, and the like.

Referring to FIG. 18, live content sources may be include analogue cable1802, descrambled digital cable 1804, satellite feed 1808, Video over IP1810 such as RTSP, MMS, UDP live stream, and video over IP SDP live 3GPPfeed 1812. Each live unencoded source may be fed into a live raw encoder1814 configured for the incoming live source. The encoded sources, suchas a SDP live 3GPP feed 1818 may be presented to the mobile mediaplatform 1820 for distribution to mobile devices 1822.

Web content may be content originating on the World Wide Web or theInternet. Web content may have originated from a different sourcedirectly or indirectly before being placed on the World Wide Web orInternet. Any of the types, sources and examples of content discussedherein may be web content. With the mobile media platform web contentmay be delivered to a mobile device. Web content may require userinterface enhancements and/or high capacity transcoding, such as on aserver or on a client to deliver web content to wireless devices thatprovide high degrees of customer satisfaction.

A mobile media platform may include content ingestion functionality andcapability that may be associated with a consumption profile, contentmanagement, and the like. Content ingestion may include activitiesassociated with sourcing, acquiring, packaging, and adapting content fordistribution to any mobile device. In addition to the content types andsources, content to be ingested may be acquired from sources of variousor unknown quality. Not only may the integrity of the content (forpurposes of safely ingesting the content) be in question, but thecontent may not fairly match information that may describe the contentsuch as metadata or keywords. The mobile media platform may supportvarious techniques to acquire, tag, encode and/or package any digitalformat of content for distribution to mobile devices over a mobileservice network.

A mobile media platform's content ingestion may acquire content bypolling third party sites for content, may use content source methods,such as RSS, spiders, direct user download, automatic update and thelike. In an example, content may be submitted or obtained via aninteractive web ports, FTP upload (push or pull), or a Web Service API.

The mobile media platform capabilities and features may include hosting;which may be configured as a secure site and may include redundancy toensure ingestion and delivery of content to mobile users. Hosting mayinvolve making content available or receiving content over a network. Inan embodiment, hosting may involve making content available to orreceiving content from a mobile device. Hosting may involve at least oneserver and at least one client.

The mobile media platform may be associated with and may facilitatedelivery to mobile devices. Content that is delivered may bepersonalized using similar genres, teams, communities of interest, andother content based mechanisms. Delivery may include downloading such asdelivering content via HTTP, RSTP download with additional wrappers forDRM, and the like. Delivery may be performed with streams, such as todelivery audio and video content via 3GPP, Real Media streaming, and thelike. Delivery may include other types of download, includingprogressive download.

Delivery services associated with the mobile media platform maydetermine an appropriate mechanism to deliver a specific element ofcontent based on the element's type, the application to which it will bedelivered, a user's preferences, device and network capabilities asdescribe herein below. Delivery may include delivery of messages to anend user.

Delivery may include combining delivery of content from differentsources or via different means. The mobile media platform may contain anapplication that combines the on-demand delivery of video over acellular network with live television broadcast content that isdelivered over a mobile broadcast technology, such as DVB-H, DMB,MediaFLO or the like, together into a single user experience

In an example, a user watching a mobile broadcast of a sporting eventmay be provided a link to view a pre-recorded video clip that covers thehighlights of the game to that point. Clicking the link may result inthe application switching video delivery sources from the mobilebroadcast network to the cellular network and causing the highlightedvideo clip to be streamed on-demand to the user via the cellularnetwork. After viewing the clip, the users could be provided other linksto allow them to choose from a list of other content that is availableon either the broadcast or cellular networks.

In another example, the application may simultaneously source contentfrom various networks and/or external repositories and integrate thedata from these various sources in order to provide the user with a highquality experience. Additionally, the content sourced from variousnetworks and/or integrated repositories may be related to the interests,whether accumulated or point in time, of the user. This may reduce orremove a need to search on the mobile handset. This process may resultin effectively increased bandwidth.

The mobile media platform may facilitate visibility of availablecontent. The mobile media platform may facilitate periodic dynamicgeneration of a content catalogue feed (such as in XML, RSS and thelike) with special listings of content to enable content items to beindexed by external systems, such as search engines, web crawlers,spiders, and the like. The catalogue feed may be posted and retrieved byan external system. Alternatively the catalogue may be pushed, such asthrough RSS, email, WAP push, and other delivery mechanisms. Inaddition, these special listings of content could include featured,recommended, or popular listings of content that are editorially basedor algorithmically generated.

Platform content visibility may include visibility into consumptionprofiles, device profiles, ingestion profiles, and any other type ofcontent, data, or information associated with the platform. In anexample, the content catalogue feed could include user information suchas aspects of a user's consumption profile in order to facilitate animproved user experience through targeted presentation of services tothe user or to support user loyalty based services.

Content, including web content, may be delivered to or received from amobile device. In embodiments, delivery of web content to a mobiledevice may require high bandwidth and/or on-demand transcoding. Inembodiments, delivery may be in the form of a notification, such as anemail, text message or instant message, including a link or reference tothe content or with the content embedded in the notification itself.

The mobile media platform may support optimization associated withvarious processes, capabilities, and features of the mobile mediaplatform. Optimization may be enacted for ingestion, encoding,transcoding, hosting, delivery, and the like. Optimization may be usedto create device profiles. Optimization may support adjusting toavailable bandwidth that is available for content delivery. Bandwidthadjustment optimization may be a function of the mobile networktechnology (e.g. cellular (GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS, CDMA, CDMA 1X,EV-DO, etc.), wifi, wimax, uwb, Bluetooth, MediaFlo, DVB-H, DMB, and thelike). Bandwidth adjustment optimization may also be a function of themobile device's network capabilities. In an example, although anoperator network provides GPRS, EDGE and HSDPA network connectivity, amobile device attempting to access our content may only be capable ofconnecting to GPRS networks. Bandwidth related optimization may also bea function of the effective bandwidth of the network as a function ofthe mobile operator's specific network configuration. Optimization mayalso be based on variations in the bandwidth as a result of the mobiledevice moving from one network technology to another during a contentconsumption session. Optimization may be implemented by adjustingencoding parameters (e.g. frames per second, bandwidth allocations,codec and the like) to suit current network capabilities.

Optimization may be associated with device playback capabilities so thata device with different audio and video capabilities may be deliveredcomposite content that meets the device capabilities for presentingeach. Differences may include different video and/or audio CODECs,capabilities of onboard players and/or CODECs. In an example, fordifferent CODECs, each CODEC may require different encoding settingsbased on variations in screen size, variations in color depth,resolution, device memory, device CPU power, and the like. Optimizationmay also be based on device content delivery mechanisms, such asstreaming, downloading, progressive download, MMS, WAP push, and thelike.

Optimization may also be associated with digital rights management (DRM)an may be a function of the mobile device's DRM technology, or may be afunction of the mobile operator's choice of DRM.

Content characteristics related to optimization may includeautomatically determining characteristics of the content itself (e.g.talking head .vs. sporting event in which the picture changes rapidlyand significantly), human or algorithmic determination.

The mobile media platform may facilitate packaging content includingrepackaging ingested content. Packaged content may be provided inarchive files, such as QuickPlay archive files, in a proprietary filestructure, may combine metadata and multiple versions of the mediaitself. Packaged content may be delivered through a batch encoding, asingle encoding, and real-time encoding. Packaging content may includewrapping content in descriptors defined in XML.

A mobile media platform may also include storage and at least onestorage facility. Storage may be for the storage of content, data,metadata, attributes, parameters and the like. Storage may be online oroffline, provided through the platform, provided on a mobile deviceand/or provided through a network. Storage may be provided using variousmethods, including, without limitation, magnetic storage, opticalstorage, semiconductor storage and the like. Storage may be providedusing various devices, including, without limitation, a hard drive,flash memory, tape drive, magnetic disks, optical discs, minidisc,semiconductor memory, USD flash drive, xD card, SD card, compact flashcard and the like.

A mobile media platform may include a user interface for enablinginteractivity, viewing thumbnails, facilitating game day tracking,enabling rich new reader features, managing end user presentation, andthe like. The user interface may also include dynamic rendering of textand images to optimize the user's experience based on the user's devicecapabilities. The user interface may include skinning, multi-tabbing,content schedules, daily features, flipbooks, sliders, displayingmultiple items at once, split screen applications, and the like.

Enabling interactivity may include framing content with links, such aspresenting information about content in a frame around the content. Inan example, framed content may be created from a baseball gamebroadcast. The frame of the broadcast content may include links towebsites of the sports teams involved in the broadcast, statistics suchas team standings, information about the contest (e.g. date, time,starting pitcher, current balls & strikes, links to advertisers orinformation about products included in the broadcast, and the like.

A user interface associated with the mobile media platform may, forexample enable displaying thumbnail images that can be integrated intotextual displays. In an example, a device may have limited screen sizethat is known to the mobile media platform through a device orconsumption profile. A document with integrated text and graphics may betranscoded and/or reformatted based on the device profile prior todelivery so that the graphics may be adapted to be replaced withthumbnail images. The thumbnail images may be identified and taggedduring an ingestion process of, for example, the document, the images inthe document, content from a thumbnail generation or lookup web service,and the like. Alternatively the mobile media platform may reformat animage during ingestion to generate and store a variety of thumbnailimages based on a variety of profiles (e.g. consumption, user, device,network) associated with the mobile media platform. The generatedthumbnail images may be tagged so that when content referencing orincluding the source image is requested by a mobile device, theappropriate thumbnail image may be selected and delivered to therequesting mobile device. Thumbnails may also be interactive in thatthey can include active elements so that when a thumbnail that isdisplayed on a mobile device is selected, an expanded image, a video, oran audio stream may be delivered and presented. Thumbnails need not besmall enough to fit on the mobile device screen. A thumbnail may bescrollable, such as through a built in user interface of the mobiledevice or through an interactive framing of the thumbnail.

Applications of a user interface associated with the mobile mediaplatform that may be presented to a user of a mobile device may includegame day tracker or a rich news reader. A game day tracker may include amulti tabbed view of the latest news with images, text, audio and video,and the like. Real-time updates of in-game scores, final results,standings, rankings, fantasy football results, and the like are someexamples of game day tracker information that may be made available to amobile user. A rich news reader may push information tickers, newsstories with images, audio, video and text integrated into a singleview. One approach to facilitate a rich news reader is to tag newsstories with metadata so that multiple media types associated with thesame story can be displayed together in an integrated fashion.

A mobile media platform user interface may facilitate managing end-userpresentation of content and the like by supporting UI widgets (e.g. userinterface related software that generate interactive content), a lightclient approach, an upgrade process, presentation of interactiveelements (e.g. widgets), presentation of a discovery interface,presentation of recommendation interface, personalization of the userinterface, and the like.

A mobile media platform may include an administrative user interfaceallowing mobile users, administrators and other users of the platform toconfigure and manage all or certain aspects of the mobile mediaplatform. In embodiment, the aspects being managed using theadministrative user interface may include ingestion, content management,content delivery preferences, reporting, analytics and the like.

A user interface may support or include other features that may optimizea user's experience. These features may include dynamic rendering basedon a device profile, presentation of multimedia elements simultaneouslywithin a unified environment, skinning (e.g. user determined, contentdetermined or branded), multi-tabbing, content schedules, dailyfeatures, flipbook of images for browsing, a pop-up or fly-in menu (e.g.a scroll wheel type dial), sliders that may add fluidity to menus,displaying useful related content simultaneously (e.g. music downloadselectable icon while a music video is playing), split screen (e.g.watch a sports broadcast and type a text message).

A mobile media platform may facilitate notification and delivery ofmessages to mobile device users. The mobile media platform may supportuser directed management of notifications so that the user may determinehow and when notifications, alerts, and messages are delivered. Anotification may be related to content. In an embodiment, a notificationmay be an email, text message, instant message or the like, which mayinclude a link or reference to the content or with the content embeddedin the notification itself. Notifications may be related to availabilityof new content, reminders of broadcast content schedules, delivery ofemail, billing notices, advertisements, and the like. In an example ofnotification and message facilitation, the mobile media platform maytrack user notification preferences and generate a message when an eventoccurs that matches user preferences. In another example, the mobilemedia platform may construct messages and use a message managementmodule to deliver the constructed messages to a network operatormessaging system.

Referring to FIG. 19, a mobile device desktop 1902 may include anotification 1904 of an email notification. Upon selection of thedesktop notification 1904, an email notification icon 1908 may indicatemobile content being associated with an email. Selecting the emailnotification icon 1908 may result in content being delivered to andpresented on the mobile device.

The mobile media platform may facilitate content discovery. Contentdiscovery may include search, recommendations, content catalog feeds,management, filtering, rating, community polling, personalization,tagging, processing, hierarchical organization, and the like. Search mayinclude searching content, metadata, tags, categories of content, thirdparty search integration, crawling multiple content stores (andpresenting in one unified search result), and the like. Examples ofrecommendation capability associated with the mobile media platform mayinclude a recommendation engine for generating recommendations that mayinclude popular clip algorithms, such as most consumed content,popularity based on a community, popularity based on all users (mobileand non-mobile), popularity based on a subset of users related to thecurrent user (e.g. similar interests, preferences, purchase history,etc). A recommendation engine may generate recommendations based oninferred preferences via algorithmic analysis of historical usagebehavior, based on direct user preference input, based on mobileactivity context, such as the sensed context of the user, (e.g.location, time of day, type of handset, network operator, time of year,and the like).

In a certain embodiment, the mobile media platform may provide a userwith accurate suggestions of relevant content before, during and after auser starts their viewing session to allow the user to quickly engage.Notifications, for example, of upcoming preferred live programming orthe availability of new pre-recorded content the user will enjoy, willallow the user to decide what content to watch, and when. The mobilemedia platform may provide cross-referral suggestions of content whilethe user is viewing other content, allowing the user to discover morewidely varied content. The mobile media platform may understand theuser's viewing habits. For example, the platform knows a particular userwatches sports highlights and weather in the morning and their favoritesports team and which weather coverage areas they are concerned with andmay use this information to deliver appropriate content. In anotherexample, the platform may know that a user typically watches the marketrecap on their commute home, and is able to adjust the user's experienceappropriately by automatically providing the market recap content andrelated content.

Content may be discovered using keyword searching, metadata sources,recommendation engine, deep linking, MyPlays, popular plays, and thelike. Metadata sources that may enable content discovery may includekeyword tagging during an ingestion process, voice to text recognition,third party public databases (e.g. IMDB, Gracenote), third party privatedatabases (e.g. subscription, membership based) in-house databases (e.g.via integration with content provider and/or operator manageddatabases).

Content discovery may be associated with a recommendation engine. Newlydiscovered content may be dynamically recommended to a user based on theuser's historic content behaviors. Content management facilities may bedirected to discover content to fulfill a recommendation requirement ofgenre, topic, or other categorization that a user has directly orindirectly demonstrated an affinity for. In an example, new content maybe separated from previously discovered content to so that only newcontent is presented to the user as recommended content.

A content catalog feed may enable content discovery, such as inconnection with search and recommendations. In an embodiment, a contentcatalog feed may be provided to search engines, including mobile searchengines. In this manner, content on the mobile media platform may beincluded in search results, including mobile search results. In anembodiment, a content catalog feed may be enable recommendations. In anembodiment, a content catalog feed may be associated with an active pushor feed of content. In an embodiment, a content catalog feed may beassociated with a passive pull or post of content, such as though theuse of a search engine, web crawler and the like. Content discovery maybe enabled through content management. A generalized content managementdata model may allow the mobile media platform to provide the ability tomanage any type of digital data.

Content discovery may be facilitated by deep linking. In embodiments,there may be a defined URL for an item of content, which may allow forthe promotion of content and viral distribution. In embodiments, WAPpush may be used to access the link. Content discovery may be associatedwith MyPlays in that new content that is related to criteria for MyPlaysmay be presented as a shortcut (e.g. at or near a top level ofnavigation) to facilitate a user immediately accessing favorite areas ofcontent. Content discovery may also provide input to MyPlays capabilityof the mobile media platform so that new content that may have a highrelevance to a user's MyPlays content description may be availablethrough a MyPlays short cut. Similarly, content discovery and a popularplays facility may allow a user to immediately access the most popularcontent directly from the top-level menu of a personal portal page. Tofacilitate an association of content discovery and popular plays, apopular play facility may combine the number and/or frequency ofdownloads with various sources of user ratings of a content to determinepopularity.

In addition to the content management features associated with contentdiscovery, content recommendations, and content search, contentmanagement may also include content filtering that may allow a user tosetup various content based filters, content rating that may enable auser to view content rating and generate content ratings (e.g. using astar system, averaging ratings, through feedback), community pollingthrough flexible format multiple choice questioning, personalization ofcontent delivery (e.g. based on a user profile, a consumption profile,operator or wireless carrier input (based on data about the user thatcomes from the carrier), various personalization algorithms,recommendations, ratings, and the like), tagging of content, fontprocessing, hierarchical category organization, clip-based retrieval,and the like. A generalized data model may provide the ability to manageany type of digital data.

A consumption profile may include history of content consumed over aperiod that may facilitate personalized content discovery features forend users. One such feature may include popular plays—a popular contentlisting may be generated based on aspects of content consumptionhistory, average user ratings of content, and the like to create aranked list of content. Another such feature may include personalizedrecommendations that may be based on a consumption profile (e.g.consumption history, user preferences, and the like) by associatingkeywords and category names of content with the consumption profile.

A mobile media platform may provide and/or utilize information relatingto the location of a mobile device or user and/or intelligence derivedin whole or in part from such location information. Location informationmay be determined or provided by the mobile device, using a globalpositioning system or a similar technology, by the mobile mediaplatform, by locating a device on a network, such as a cellular networkor WiFi network, by user input, by examining transactions and selectionsmade using the device and the like. Location information may be updatedin real time, at set intervals, periodically, on-demand and the like. Inan embodiment, location information may be used to identify businesseslocated near to the user. In an embodiment, location intelligence may beused in conjunction with other information to present content to a user.In an example, the location of a user combined with data regarding thetime of day may be used to present the user with advertisements, menusand coupons for restaurants located in the vicinity of the user. In anembodiment, location intelligence may include determining if a user isin a car, train or plane based on the location of the user and thevelocity of the user. In an embodiment, location intelligence may beused to determine that a user is approaching a traffic jam and localtraffic video content may be presented on the mobile device.

A mobile media platform may be characterized by a personalized userexperience. The platform may leverage information about users and userpreferences to personalize the user experience. In embodiments theplatform may leverage recommendations from the communities to which theuser belongs and use the information to present relevant content. In anexample, for a sports fan the platform may include the user's favoriteteams at the top of menus and search results to make it easier for theuser to locate relevant content. This is especially helpful since on amobile device it is difficult to present more than 2 or 3 links, not 20or 30 as on a computer. In another example, a user may routinely watchthe news, weather and horoscopes every morning. As a result, theplatform may serve this content to the user.

The mobile media platform may enable a mobile device to be used as apersonal entertainment portal to a personal entertainment server orvice-versa. The mobile media platform may operate as a personal contentportal that enables browsing functionality and featured content. Themobile media platform may support QuickPlays that may include predictivecontent recommendations, MyPlays that may include user subscribedpreferences to content, popular plays that may be dynamically populatedwith content that is highly rated by a community of users, searchintegration, content ranking that may show a community ranking and allowa user to enter a ranking, deep linking to allow direct access tocontent rather than going through various affiliates or redirection sothat a deep link may be sent to a friend or other mobile user.

A user may associate the mobile media platform with an interactiveprogramming guide. Another way to view this is that the mobile mediaplatform may generate a customized interactive programming guide for auser, such as based on the user profile, an associated consumptionprofile, or a device profile. The interactive programming guide mayinclude combining broadcast and on-demand content and may be enabled bymetadata tagging and inter-content relationships developed throughapplication of user behavior algorithms, editorial control, and thelike.

A mobile media platform may be associated with social networking orcommunity aspects. Social networking aspects may include user contentreferral, user content rating, forums, gifting, buddy list management,peer-to-peer management, communities of interest, profile pages, dMail,points, message boards, newsletters, shopping, dynamic home pageconstruction, advertising, notifications, and the like. User contentreferral may enable mobile users to inform other users about contentthrough message transmission (e.g. SMS with a WAP push, MMS, email).When combined with buddy list management, message transmission may bedirected to a subset of mobile users selected from the buddy list.Social network or community ratings may allow users to rate a piece ofcontent after the user has listened to or viewed the content on theuser's mobile device. Community ratings may be based on a scale such asa star scale (where more stars may mean a higher rating). Community orother user ratings may be used (such as through an averaging algorithm)to drive popular plays and other content discovery mechanisms.

Social networking aspects of a mobile media platform may facilitateforums, such as forums related to content. Forums may provide facilitiesfor users to conduct online conversations with other forum members.Forums may be standalone or may be integrated with existing web-basedforums or blogs. A forum may provide private access to content for forummembers. The mobile media platform may support forum membership throughallowing forum members to invite other mobile users to join the forum orto join a topic based private conversation of forum members.Alternatively, private messaging features associated with the mobilemedia platform may be useful to communicate between forum members andother mobile users. Messages may be communicated via SMS, email, privateforum pages and the like.

Although not limited to social networking environments, gifting may befacilitated by social networking aspects of the mobile media platform.In an example, a user may send content to another user as a gift so thatthe sending user is billed for the content and perhaps for the giftingservice. Similarly, a user may request a gift, such as from a communitymember who may be soliciting requests for content gifts.

Buddy list management is an integral part of social networking andon-line communities. The mobile media platform may allow a user to buildand manage a list of other mobile users as a buddy list. The mobilemedia platform may also allow a user to classify buddies into groups.

In addition to gifting and message based content sharing, peer-to-peermanagement may facilitate sharing content via one or more servers, suchas mobile media platform servers, network servers, third party servers,and the like. To manage peer-to-peer sharing, shared content may betracked through the mobile media platform so that digital rightsmanagement, billing for content, and the like may be managed. Paying forshared or gifted content may be done through a direct bill to the user'smobile service provider account, a credit card for per-use orsubscription services, or through a third party payer service such asPayPal.

Social networking may also be beneficial to the formation and managementof communities of interest. The mobile media platform may supportcommunities of interest through user registration. Users may be placedinto specific communities automatically or through a selection ofinterests. Additionally, communities of interest may be organized alongsets of criteria which can be used to determine eligibility. Communitiesmay also have voting for special members of the community. This may bereflected graphically in an avatar representation of the member. Thisrepresentation may make it obvious who are the voted communitytastemakers, trendsetters, power brokers, brand strokers, persuasiveinfluencers, and the like.

Profile pages may be users' individual spaces in a community. Each usermay get one that they may customize. The mobile media platform mayprovide services that allow a user to import appearance skins that theymay customize with a slide show, quote, favorite link, and the like.Profile pages may derive information from a user profile associated withthe mobile media platform and may include blog links, bookmarks offavorite content, interests, buddy lists and friend connections and thelike. Interests may be published and provide the ability to see a listof people who share them. People may be added to friends' lists as wellas see who has marked them as a friend in return.

An internal community email system may permit message sending within aspecific community or across a service.

The mobile media platform may facilitate earning, reporting, andredeeming points associated with mobile media platform based activityrelated to the social networking community. A user may, by participatingin a community in different ways earn points. In an example, a user mayearn points for playing games, blog posting, posting messages in messageboards, and the like. Points may accumulate for individuals or groups ofindividuals. Points may be redeemed and prizes may be presented to highpoint earners. Point ratings may be presented on a user's home page, beincluded in content or messages originating form a high points earner,or in association with an avatar so that other community users mayidentify these users.

Social networking also typically includes message boards that may bethemed to provide an opportunity to communicate openly within acommunity to share ideas relevant to the community, newsletters in whichusers may contribute articles and images for consideration to beincluded in a periodical newsletter, shopping through interactivestorefronts with themed merchandise that can be purchased, advertisingthat may be built into various aspects of the community to supportfeatures, notifications that a user may receive about different thingshappening related to the community. The homepage may change every day toreflect additions to the service, and draw users' attention towardswhat's new, what's hot, and so on. Users may also share content andtheir experiences with other users. Users may be able to express theiropinion on the content in the form of rating (one to five stars) andtagging (e.g., for a clip categorized under extreme sports, a user couldadd their own community tags of hang gliding, crash, scary). They mayalso recommend content to their friends and other users and see whatcontent their friends, peers or the user population as a whole arewatching and recommending. A user may place a link to mobile content ona Web 2.0 site.

Content may be shared on mobile devices as an aspect of socialnetworking. In an embodiment, this may enable sharing of viral videos.In an embodiment, this may result in the use of an email inbox as acontent portal on mobile devices, such as mobile smartphones. In anembodiment, an email may be sent from one user to another containingcontent and/or links to content. A user will be able to send such anemail to another user even if the other user is on a different networkor is using a different device. In an embodiment, an email may containnotification of new content and may contain the content and/or links tothe content. In an embodiment, content may be pushed to the mobiledevice at an off-peak time. The inbox may receive content in the sameway that email messages are received, such as an over-the-air push,rather than on-demand. In embodiments, user profiles may be used tostore notification preferences and awareness of which users areparticipating in the system. In embodiments, user profiles may alsoenable the platform to send a user customized content.

In a certain embodiment, such as the embodiment of FIG. 20, the mobiledevice may be a blackberry device. A blackberry device may have thecapability to receive and display HTML emails. The mobile media platformmay be configured to send HTML emails to these devices. This may allowthe user to receive emails which contain hyperlinks that are moregraphically pleasing than normal emails. A blackberry device may supportthe JSR 211 ContentHandler API which may allow a mobile application tobe associated with certain types of content, allowing the mobileapplication to launch when the user opens that type of content. Ablackberry device may contain a MailListener API, which supportsscanning the Inbox for email messages which meet certain criteria. As anexample, a mobile application could listen for emails arriving whichcontain a certain subject, and perform some action when it arrives. Ablackberry device may contain an API to display small notification iconson the main screen of the device. A blackberry device may contain an APIto embed a media player within a mobile application, so that users canwatch videos inside applications, as well as through the built-in mediaplayer that comes with the device. In relation to sharing content onmobile devices, the mobile media platform may have the ability to storepersonalization information about a unique user, including usernotification preferences and contact information, to send HTML-formattedemails and to configure the MIME-type which may be returned with customHTTP requests. In a certain embodiment, the mobile media platform maynotify a user when new content is available and present the user withthe new content and/or a link to the new content via email. The userinstalls a mobile application on their mobile device, which registersitself as the handler for a particular MIME-type. The user uses theapplication to communicate their notification preferences to the mobilemedia platform; for example, notify me about new sports videos. Themobile media platform sends the user emails when new content isavailable to view. These emails may contain a hyperlink to a small fileon the mobile media platform. The mobile media platform may beconfigured to return these small files with the same MIME-Type for whichthe application was registered. The user receives the email, and clickson the link to the small file. The email is an HTML email, and thereforethe actual file being downloaded is masked from the user by a prettyhyperlink. The application may scan the inbox for these notificationemails, and display a customized notification icon when these specialemails arrive. The application launches, downloads the small file, whichcontains a mapping to a particular video to play back to the user. Theapplication then plays the video.

In a certain embodiment, one user may send content to another user usingthe technique described above for the platform to notify the user of newcontent, however, the email may be initiated differently. An applicationmay permit a user to send a video to a friend, making a request to themobile media platform, which sends an email to the appropriate person.If the recipient already has the application installed, then thebehavior may be identical to that described above, including the displayof notification icons. If the recipient does not have the applicationinstalled, the email can provide them with a link to download theapplication or another means of accessing the content.

The mobile media platform may facilitate carrier management. The mobilemedia platform may be associated with ecommerce such as billing,pricing, event tracking, bundling, tiered services, content purchase(e.g. individual pieces, collections, subscriptions), discounts, freeservices and content, multimedia advertising delivery and monetization.In an embodiment, a subscription may be to certain content and certainadditional content is identified as premium content outside thesubscription plan and the user has to pay extra to access this content.The platform may also allow users to preview content (such as a musicvideo) or try/demonstrate content (such as a game) before the userpurchases the content.

Billing price plans may be tightly associated with specific content thatmay be associated in a content catalogue layout whereby, the billingprice plan defines access to content (e.g. a single content item,multiple content items or a group of categories each containing contentitems). Pricing complexity and flexibility may be supported by nestingbilling price plans and otherwise combining simple price plans.

Billing price plan definitions may be used in various billing models.Examples of billing models include:

Pay Per Duration—Users can pay for access to content (a single contentitem, multiple content items or a group of categories each containingcontent items) over a period of time.

Subscription—Users can pay a recurring charge for access to content (asingle content item, multiple content items or a group of categorieseach containing content items).

Pay Per Use—Users can pay a one time fee for consumption of content,such as a single item of content, a library of content, a subset ofcontent, and the like.

The mobile media platform may enable digital rights management. Themobile medial platform may permit the administration of rights in adigital environment. The mobile media platform may allow rights holdersto track and receive compensation for use of their content and otherintellectual property. The mobile media platform may adapt theimplementation of digital rights management to different carriers.

The mobile media platform may also provide reporting facilities, such astransaction logs, event logs, digital rights and virtual property useand consumption royalties and recommendation reporting. Reports may begenerated and/or accessed through a web interface.

The mobile media platform may facilitate mobile media platform relatedadministration. Administration may include managing users, user accountmanagement, administrator user account management, preferencemanagement, server side and client side management, mobile mediaplatform management, user profiles, user registry, carrier profiles,consumption profiles, device profiles, encoding and transcodingfeatures, and the like. Mobile media platform management may includemonitoring and configuring the operation of the mobile media platform,management reporting, system performance monitoring, content management,pricing management, and the like. User profiles and management mayinclude profile management components that each user may crate andcustomize with their preferences and settings on an ongoing basis. Userregistry management may include global user profiles, user applicationpreferences, extensiblility management, managing a unique user identity(and/or classification of a user to a category of users) within oracross mobile networks and/or associating a mobile network profile witha fixed web based profile. Profiles similar to user profiles may bemaintained for carriers. The user interface may be extensible.Applications can use this information to determine the most appropriatecontent and delivery method, providing a personalized user experience. Auser identifier can be unique within a mobile network or potentiallyacross mobile networks or extending to a fixed web based profile. A useridentifier can be a category of users.

In a certain embodiment, the mobile media platform may provide a userinterface for content management, including administrative aspects ofcontent management. Referring to FIG. 21, the content management userinterface may be provided as the content tab of a larger user interface.The user interface may allow a user to select content, view content,manage parameters and attributes of content, create a content index orqueue, move content, copy content, remove content, filter content, ordercontent and the like.

In a certain embodiment, the mobile media platform may provide a userinterface for reporting, including administrative aspects of reporting.Referring to FIG. 22, the reporting user interface may be provided asthe reporting tab of a larger user interface. The user interface mayallow a user to generate reports for certain data ranges with certainfilters applied.

In a certain embodiment, the mobile media platform may provide a userinterface for ingestion management, including administrative aspects ofingestion management. Referring to FIG. 23, the ingestion managementuser interface may be provided as the ingestion tab of a larger userinterface. The user interface may allow a user to schedule ingestionfrom a particular source at a particular time or on a particularschedule. The user interface may allow a user to pause ingestion. Theingestion management user interface may also include tabs, menus and/orpages for job queue, listeners, profiles and components. Referring toFIG. 24, components may include components for encoding with associatedprofiles.

In a specific embodiment, the ingestion user interface may be asdescribed in FIGS. 25 though 40. Referring to FIG. 25, the mainingestion page may provide links to all the key ingestion-relatedfunctions. FIG. 26 depicts how feeds may be viewed and managed. Withthis interface a user may choose a provider from the dropdown thatcontains the providers in the system. Once a user chooses a providerfrom the dropdown, the page refreshes to display FIG. 27, which ispopulated with information specific to the chosen provider. This pagemay contain a table which contains the feeds that have been set up forthe provider. The table may display the feed name, type, and the first40 characters of the URL/path (truncated and with an ellipsis appended)and the like. The name may be linked, and may take the user to the “EDITFEED SUMMARY (page 8/8)” page. This table may be sorted alphabeticallyby name. Each row of the table may be preceded by a checkbox. The tablemay contain a DELETE SELECTED button. Clicking this may refresh thepage, and delete the checked rows. When a user clicks “ADD NEW FEED” theused is linked to the “ADD FEED WIZARD (page 1)” page as shown in FIG.28. This is the first page of the Add Feed Wizard. It prompts the userto enter the feed type and feed name. It may also displays the feedprovider as uneditable text. The wizard may contain a subnav down theleft side of the page. When ADDING a new feed, this subnav may containthe title of each page in the wizard, and also may give the user anindication of how far along they are in the wizard process. Items inthis subnav can be in many states including: greyed text+unlinked(future step); bold+unlinked (current step); and normal text+linked(past step). The user may be able to click on a “past” link and go backto that step in the wizard process. When the user is EDITING an existingfeed, the subnav may function as tabs, to navigate from one area of thefeed to another. In that case, all of the items in that area may belinks. Every page of the wizard may have the “BACK”, “NEXT”, FINISH and“CANCEL” buttons. On the first page, the “BACK” button may be disabled,on the last page the “NEXT” button may be disabled. During ADD, theFINISH button may be disabled on every page but the final one, andduring EDIT it may be active on ever page. Clicking NEXT and BACKbuttons may maintain any information that the user has entered thus far(i.e.: if they click back then next, the data they entered on aparticular page should still be there). However, the feed may not trulyexist within the system until the user presses FINISH at the end, tocommit the changes.

FIG. 29 depicts the second page of the feed wizard, which may allow auser to select the category labels that will be associated with thefeed. The majority of this page may be occupied by a Fieldset, whichallows the user to add multiple category labels to the feed withoutnavigating on to the next page of the wizard. The user can enter alabel, and then select the Carrier. Once they've selected the Carrier,the Product Dropdown may populate with the products attached to thatcarrier. This dropdown may contain both the product name and versionnumber. The user selects this, and the category control may populatewith a tree view. Users then may pick a category to associate with thelabel. Clicking “ADD LABEL” will then add this pair to the list oflabels below. Beneath the “ADD” button, there is a list of all thelabels that have been created for this feed. The list is sorted by labelname, and the sort order may not be modified in certain cases. Eachlabel may have a checkbox next to it. The user may click the checkboxesand then press “DELETE SELECTED” to remove labels from the list. Allactions within the fieldset may either function via javascript or maysimply refresh the page with the new information. In this particularembodiment, at least one category code must be created before the useris allowed to proceed to the next page.

FIG. 30 depicts the interface allowing a user to choose the publicationrules for the feed. “Simple” and “Batch” publication may be two of manymethods. Both SIMPLE and BATCH publishing methods may cause clips to beplaced “FIRST” in the category. The user may also choose the defaultcategory for clips to be placed in, in case the content provider doesnot specify where they should go. This may be a dropdown containing alist of all the CATEGORY CODES that were created during STEP 2. FIG. 31depicts the interface allowing a user to set the ingestion schedule,which is the schedule that may be used to both check the feed andpublish the content. As shown in the figure, the user may also specifyother options using the interface. In this embodiment, the first run ofthe feed's publication schedule should be set for a future time. If theuser chooses the options in such a way that the “first” scheduled updatetime occurs in the past, then the system should compute when the first“future” run will be, based on that time, and schedule it as the firstrun instead, rather than trying to run a backlog of multiple jobs atonce. For example, the current time is Aug 13, 13:54 and the userschedules things to run every half hour, starting at 12:30 (a typo). Thefirst run should be scheduled for 14:00. It may be that the Start Timeis changed before being saved, so that it appears this way when the userreturns to this page.

The interface shown in FIG. 32 may allow a user to type in the feed URLof the feed and the encoding type to expect. There may be a PERFORMENCODING? checkbox, which may be checked by default. If this isunchecked, the “FIRST ENCODING PASS” dropdown may become disabled. The“FIRST ENCODING PASS” dropdown may contain all the encoding profilenames. If the feed is of type RSS, then the user may type in a URL. Ifthe feed is of type QAR, then the user may type in a PATH. The textshould may change appropriately. Also, with QAR, the “SECURE FEED”controls may not need to be displayed. The field on this page may beskipped in certain cases. For example, when a separate feed setupexists.

The interface shown in FIG. 33 may allow a user to customize theencoding profiles that are being used for this feed. “Default” encodingprofiles may be set up in the system (see “manage encoding profile”pages), but these may also be customized. The controls in the secondfieldset allow for customization. A dropdown may appear, containing thename of each profile. Selecting a particular item in the dropdown maypopulate the profile in the text area. The user may then modify itthere. Clicking save may cause the overridden profile to be associatedwith this feed for that encoding profile. When a profile has beenover-ridden, it may appear in the dropdown with an asterisk (*)pre-pended to its name. Additionally, when the user views this profile,the “RESTORE DEFAULT” button may be enabled. Clicking this button maydelete the over-riding version, and restore the default profile. Thetext areas may simply contain the XML profile but may also specifyencoding profiles. The dropdown may be filtered to contain profileswhich are being used for a particular feed. The “First Pass” encoding(as chosen during a previous step) may appear here, as will the OUTPUTencodings, which are algorithmically determined based on the user'scategory choices.

The interface shown in FIG. 34 may summarize the details of the feedthat have been set up by the user. It may also be the page that a userarrives at if he chooses to EDIT an existing feed. Once a new feed hasbeen saved FIG. 35 may be shown. This interface may provide intelligentnavigation options including MANAGE THIS FEED which may displays theFEED SUMMARY screen and ADD ANOTHER FEED which may return to the firstpage of the ADD NEW FEED WIZARD.

FIG. 36 displays the ingestion schedule for every feed in the system,which may not be a list of jobs, but a list of feeds. The list in thetable may contain the following columns: a checkbox, to select that row;feed provider+feed name (this text may be linked); feed schedule (plainenglish); last execution date and time; next execution date and time;and pass? (which is an indication of whether the last ingestion ransuccessfully, or not). The list may be ordered by “next execution dateand time”, ascending (i.e.: soonest first). There may be a maximum 20rows that can be displayed at a time, with pagination at the bottom ofthe table if more feeds are scheduled. When a particular feed is“paused”, then the word “PAUSED” may appear beneath the NEXT EXECUTIONcolumn. If the job is running, it may say “RUNNING”. All “paused” feedsmay appear last in the list due to the sort order. If a feed has not runyet, then its LAST EXECUTION column may be blank. Clicking on theProvider+Feed link may link to the appropriate “EDIT FEED” page. Beneaththe table there may be a dropdown which can be used to perform actionson the feed. This dropdown may contain the following values: RE-RUNIMMEDIATELY, PAUSE and UNPAUSE. Each of these actions may cause theaction to happen on the selected feeds immediately, and may cause thepage to refresh with the new data.

The user interface of FIG. 37 may be used to add a new encoding profile.The fields may include NAME and CONFIGURATION. The “Configuration” textfield may contain an XML profile. After SAVE, the user may be shown aconfirmation message at the top of the page (as displayed). Clickingcancel may return the user to the page they were just at, without savinganything. Once a new profile has been saved, FIG. 38 may be shown. Thisinterface may provide intelligent navigation options, including MANAGETHIS PROFILE (which may display the MANAGE PROFILE screen with thisprice code selected in the dropdown and its information pre-populated inthe fields) and ADD ANOTHER PROFILE (which may return to the ADD NEWPROFILE screen with blank fields ready to be filled in).

FIG. 39 may be the user interface a user arrives at when they choose tomanage an encoding profile from the main ingestion page. A user may beable to select an existing profile from the dropdown. This may refreshthe page with the details for that particular profile. The userinterface of FIG. 40 may be used to edit an existing encoding profile.User interface fields here may include NAME and CONFIGURATION. The“Configuration” text field may contain an XML profile. After SAVE, theuser may be shown a confirmation message at the top of the page (asdisplayed).

Content may be advertisements, marketing materials and the like. Thecontent may be an interstitial advertisement, banner ad, in stream ad,ad placed in the content itself, ad framing the content, an ad appearingbefore or after the content and the like. Advertisements may be placedinto pods. Advertisements may be clustered and positioned, such aswithin, adjacent to, in front of and behind other objects.Advertisements may be inserted into other content, such as mobilecontent. Insertion of advertisements may take place with both a thinclient and a rich client. An advertisement may be interactive allowing auser to access additional information and content by clicking on orotherwise interacting with the ad or aspects of the ad. An advertisementmay be associated with one or more related or companion advertisements.In an example, a user may click on an ad and be shown a companion ad. Anadvertisement may be associated with one or more prohibitedadvertisements that may not be shown near in time or space theadvertisement. For example, ads for a competitor of an advertiser may benegatively associated with the advertisements of the advertiser, and notpermitted to be shown on the same screen or within one hour of deliveryof an ad for the advertiser. Ads may be automatically tagged tofacilitate delivery, targeting, interaction, impression measuring andthe like Ads may be ingested, tagged, encoded, transcoded and the likein a manner similar to other types of content.

The mobile media platform may be associated with advertising management.Advertisements may be managed and served within the platform, or throughintegration with advertisement management systems, such as those of acontent provider. The mobile media platform may contain various userinterfaces for management of advertising. There may be separate userinterfaces for end users, advertisers, carriers and the like.Advertisement management may allow insertion of banner and interstitialadvertisements into mobile applications, such as through thin and richclients. Advertisements may be managed and served within the mobilemedia platform or through integration with content provideradvertisement managerial systems. In an example, advertisements may beorganized into advertising pods, cluster advertising, and the like thatmay be placed next to, in front of, or behind other content objectsdelivered to a mobile user by the mobile media platform.

The mobile media platform may be associated with targeted advertising.In an embodiment, a consumption profile may facilitate targetedadvertising. In another example, one possible method to support targetedadvertising may include analyzing a user's consumption profile anddetermining common genres that the user may like. This information couldbe used in third party ad-server integration for targeted advertising.In embodiments, data about the user and user preferences may also beused to facilitate targeted advertising. In embodiments, locationinformation and location intelligence may also be used to facilitatetargeted advertising.

Social networking may be associated with advertising on the mobile mediaplatform. Content and related advertisements may be referred through thesocial networking aspects of the platform. Ad spaces and sponsorshipsmay be built using the platform. The mobile media platform may beassociated with an ad fulfillment engine. The ad fulfillment engine mayuse techniques for targeting and delivery of ads to fulfill certainadvertising related objectives. Objective may include one or more ofdelivering a certain number of ads, delivering ads to a certaindemographic of users, delivering ads for a certain advertiser,delivering ads during a certain time period and the like. The adfulfillment engine may generate or be involved in the generation ofreports regarding the delivery and consumption of advertisements andother content. The ad fulfillment engine may interface with, assist orbe assisted by the settlement and mediation processes of the mobilemedia platform.

The Mobile media platform may include a security facility and securityfunctionality, which may include authentication, authorization,passwords, purchase verification, access control, biometricidentification, encryption and the like. Security may be directed atsecuring access to the platform and may also be directed at protectingthe content and information of the platform, such as during datatransfers.

A variety of billing systems may be supported by and facilitated by themobile media platform. Usage collection may provide a mechanism tocollect relevant information related to the consumption of content andstore it in a central location for billing and reporting purposes.Pricing for billing may enable establishing pricing for content to allowan advice of a charge for access to or consumption of the content priorto the access or consumption. Pricing may be set locally or can beestablished via integration with content provider or mobile operatorproduct catalogues or billing systems.

Billing price plans may be tightly associated with specific content thatmay be associated in a content catalogue layout whereby, the billingprice plan defines access to content (e.g. a single content item,multiple content items or a group of categories each containing contentitems). Pricing complexity and flexibility may be supported by nestingbilling price plans and otherwise combining simple price plans.

Billing price plan definitions may be used in various billing models.Examples of billing models include pay per duration and subscription,among others. In pay per duration a user may pay for access to content(a single content item, multiple content items or a group of categorieseach containing content items) over a period of time. In a subscriptionmodel, a user may pay a monthly recurring charge for access to content(a single content item, multiple content items or a group of categorieseach containing content items).

Operator billing facilities may be provided for billing consumers viatheir mobile operator. Off-portal billing may allow the integration ofcredit card clearing houses, third party payment systems such as PayPal,and the like to pay for billed services. Billing services may beintegrated with loyalty programs associated with the mobile mediaplatform so that users of the mobile media platform may be rewarded fortheir loyalty through frequent buyer discounts, special offers, tieredlevels of service, and the like. Billing may also be integrated withmobile operator billing systems to include content pricing queries, IPDRdirect content billing channels, SMPP premium SMS billing channels,proprietary web services (e.g. AMDOCS), carrier BSS and/or OSS. Billingmay also use a percent of billing event methodology and/or a data chargebased the amount of bandwidth consumed by the delivery of a piece orcollection of content. A charge can either be a bulk (wholesale)purchase of the right to send and receive a certain amount of data on amobile telecom providers network or it may be an individually metereddata transaction.

The mobile media platform may be integrated with other systems byvarious methods of integration. Other systems may include carriersystems, content provider systems, systems of mobile devices, adservers, Internet-based systems, web-based systems, billing systems,content delivery systems, encoding and transcoding systems, storagesystems, social networking systems, hosting systems, ingestion systems,security systems, search engines, mobile search engines, deviceproviders, and the like. The platform may integrate with companiesand/or systems that provide services and devices, such as Apple (iPhone,iTunes), Yahoo (e-books, reader device), Verizon (phones and services),and the like. Methods of integration may include hard coding, loosecoupling, over a network, using application programming interfaces,using interfaces and the like.

General architecture aspects of the mobile media platform are disclosedthrough this specification and may include, without limitation, any ofthe following: application layer (J2ME, BREW, WAP, HTML, etc), abusiness module including a content facility layer for fulfillment andhosting, a commerce facility layer for merchandising and billing, aculture facility layer for communities and personalization, a componentlayer with modules and/or facilities that include search interface,digital rights management, loyalty programs, partner management, aregistry of the parties involved in the creation and delivery ofcontent, and the revenue sharing relationship between the parties.Revenue shares may be determined, and facilities may be provided forrevenue reconciliation between the various entities, peer-to-peermanagement, buddy list management, browser interface, streaming service,off-portal billing, customer service representatives, self-caremanagement, content filter management, gifting, encoding, transcoding,download service, operator billing, advertisement manager, notificationmanagement, forum/blog/rant, content ingestion, device management,pricing, management console, profile management, user content rating,content management, delivery management, usage collection, storefront,user registry, user content referral, and the like. The mobile mediaplatform may also or alternatively include a system layer with acomponent management architecture, a thin client or a thick client mode,device registry, and the like.

The mobile media platform may be usefully and beneficially applied to awide variety of applications. Additionally, the platform may provide awide variety of applications related to mobile media methods andsystems. Applications of the platform may include branding; increasingbrand strength, e-commerce, channels, games, purchasing platform, homeshopping network, digital distribution, distribution channels, creationof communities, social networking, web browsing, creation of a portal,targeted advertising/marketing, advertisement fulfillment engine thatmay use data about the user and user preferences, and store frontapplications. This sample descriptive list of applications that may beassociated with the mobile media platform is not intended to belimiting.

FIG. 41 depicts one particular embodiment of a video content hostingprocess. A content provider 4102 may provide the content, such as avideo file 4104, along with metadata in XML format 4108. The platformmay include a content requester 4110, metadata processing engine 4112,video transcoding engine 4114, processed metadata 4118, formatted videofiles 4120, metadata assignment 4122, archive files 4124, acategorization facility 4128 and a publication facility 4130. FIG. 41depicts the use of descriptors defined in XML to wrap content and tag itinto the platform. Content may be aligned by device, so that commoninfrastructure will service the needs of a carrier's network; forexample, for a particular carrier all of their core networks, such asEVDO, iDEN and CDMA may be supported.

Referring to FIG. 42, the client application architecture may enable adevice independent rich user experience, a proprietary or othercommunications protocol and ease of porting. The device independent richuser experience may use J2ME, BREW, WAP, RIM jde, Symbian, Linux Mobile,Windows and the like. The device independent rich user experience mayuse and/or enable embedded or proprietary players. The deviceindependent rich user experience may use or enable business logic and/orsessions managed on a server. The device independent rich userexperience may use or enable carrier specific network and handset logic,such as handset capability determination and delivery methoddetermination. The proprietary or other communications protocols mayenable in-background processes, optimization of bandwidth (clientcache), application version checking, update notification and the like.Ease of porting may enable intelligent pagination, scalable graphics,dynamic custom fonts and the like. The platform may dynamicallycalculate the amount of text that can be shown and may dynamicallyrender it instead of hard coding (pagination, graphics and fonts).

Referring again to FIG. BB23-3, the platform may contain a thin clientportion and a firmware level for each device. Each device may havedifferent firmware settings and hardware profiles, such as differentscreen resolutions, color depths, memory, memory handling and the like.The thin client aspect of the platform may facilitate interaction withthe disparate devices and may allow for a framework where connectivityand applications can be built on top of the device. The platform mayalso contain a communications protocol which may permit initiation ofmore than one process simultaneously. The platform may also allow foroptimization of bandwidth and cached content on the device. The platformmay also enable the ability to upgrade the application in real-time onceit is delivered to the market place. This may be advantageous as manyusers do not look for new versions, decline upgrades and/or are notsophisticated enough to complete the update process. Instead of hardcoding pages, the platform may enable the dynamic calculation andoptimization of page sizes, font type and sizes, amount of text todisplay and the like based on properties of the device and the platform.

The platform may contain its own user interface layer which is built ontop of the development platform for each device. This layer may berepeatable and may function as a library, such as a library of APIs,which can be leveraged across various platforms. In this regard, theplatform may handle a wide range of devices, operators, networks and thelike. This layer may also allow for depth of content, services,customization and the like.

A store front application associated with the mobile media platform mayinclude a facility to market content to consumers via a number ofchannels, including interactive WAP, web, and mobile rich clientapplications, as well as SMS short code, and mobile bar code campaigns.The store front application may enable consumers to discover content,provide a means for content providers to highlight and display thevaluable content to the user via product placement in the user interfacethrough ‘most popular’ feature rotation and content grouping based onthemes and providing interactive cues (e.g. “more like this”). A storefront application of the mobile media platform may include a webinterface that may be used by content management editors and the like tomanage editorial content features, such as may be defined by specialpromotional or other business drivers. The mobile media platform mayalso include or function as a purchasing platform. The mobile mediaplatform may enable or function as a mobile home shopping network.Through purchasing, shopping and storefront applications, among otherapplications, the mobile media platform may assist with branding andimpact brand strength.

The mobile media platform may include or function as a portal, contentportal or the like. The platform may include or function as adistribution channel, such as a content distribution channel, digitaldistribution or the like. In an embodiment, the platform may include orfunction as a retail channel, wholesale channel or the like.

Referring to FIG. 43, the mobile media platform may function as asyndication platform for content providers to enable their content to bedelivered to end users via various distribution points, such as mobileoperators or carriers like Verizon and Bell mobility, Web 2.0distributors like Google and Yahoo, device manufacturers like Nokia andApple, content portals like MTV and CBS, retailers like Amazon andWal-Mart.

Referring to FIG. 44, the mobile media platform may facilitate contentproviders reaching consumers, preparing their content for distribution,facilitating transactions, and the like through capabilities thatsupport broadcast TV, radio, long form content, user generated content,video on demand, audio on demand, information gathering andpresentation, and the like. Distribution points may provide mobile userswith gateways to the content and the mobile media platform may deliverthe content through the gateway or directly to the user through areferral from the gateway.

The mobile media platform may include, enable and/or facilitate games,such as mobile games. The platform may include or enable a gamingportal, gaming community or the like. A user may play a game on a mobiledevice. Games may be played over a network. The games may be singleplayer games or multiplayer games. A game may include or be associatedwith one or more virtual worlds or real-world communities. The platformmay facilitate mobile game tournaments and allow users to share scores,in addition to playing against each other.

The mobile media platform may support and be associated with a widevariety of users who may interact with, benefit from, or otherwise havea relationship to the mobile media platform or to aspects of the mobilemedia platform. Representative users may include end users; consumers,advertisers, marketers, content providers, content owners, networks,broadcasters, media companies, mobile carriers, record companies, moviestudios, regulators, mobile device designers, mobile devicemanufacturers, mobile device offerors, mobile service consolidators andaffiliates, retailers, and the like.

The mobile media platform may be associated with various businessmodels. Business models may include models for operating the mobilemedia platform, providing services associated with the platform,establishing business relationships with partners, capitalizing onmarket opportunities, protecting and promoting platform relatedintellectual property, internationalization, and the like. Mobile mediaplatform related business models may include shared risk, shared reward,short code and bar code campaigns, white label/private label, paymentand pricing models (e.g. subscription, per-use, pre-paid, post-paid,free trial, gifting, begging), distribution models (e.g. initiated ondeck (i.e., via the operator's portal facilities), initiated off-deck(i.e., via non-operator portal), initiated via short code, initiated viaviral distribution and the like), ad-supported models (e.g. bulk, perview, click-through, search keyword auction, ad media, banner ads,audio/video bumpers, splash screens, interstitials, location based),revenue share management (e.g. content provider, mobile operator), andthe like. The mobile media platform may facilitate multi-vendor businessmodels through mediation and settlement of mobile content eventsassociated with content discovery, ingestion, encoding, syndication,notification, distribution, streaming, ad serving, and othercapabilities of the platform. Mediation and settlement may furtherenable supporting complex business models as new participants,technologies, and content intersect with current business models. In anexample, a business model may include giving end users free access tomost mobile content and charging the user a fee for some specializedand/or premium content. This model may enable additional ad sponsoringarrangements to mitigate the end user charges associated with thespecialized and/or premium content.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may impact seamless switchingamong unicast, multicast and broadcast content 128 110 and betweennetworks. In an embodiment, switching between broadcast andunicast/multicast content 128 may be facilitated by a consumptionprofile 102. In an embodiment, the network profile 208 may be used tofacilitate seamless switching between two separate networks. Thenetworks may differ in underlying technology. Networks may be GSM, GPRS,EDGE, HSDPA, UMTS, CDMA, CDMA 1X, EV-DO, WiFi, WiMax, uwb, Bluetooth,MediaFlo, DVB-H, DMB and the like.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be affected by and/orfacilitate advanced encoding and/or transcoding 104. In an embodiment,parameters and attributes of advanced encoding and/or transcoding 104may be determined by a consumption profile 102. The encoding profile mayspecify the parameters and attributes of encoding and/or transcoding.The network profile and device profile may influence the attributes andparameters of encoding and/or transcoding so that the content 128 willbe compatible and optimized for the network and device, respectively.The content 128 profile and user profile may also impact advancedencoding and/or transcoding 104. The content 128 profile and userprofile may determine which content 128 is encoded and/or transcoded.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be affected by and/orfacilitate automated content 128 tagging 108. Tags may be maintained aspart of the consumption profile 102. The consumption profile 102 mayalso include information that impacts how tags are applied to content128 and the types of tags that are applied to content 128. Inembodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be affected by and/orfacilitate pausing and resuming playback. Markers and the likeassociated with pausing and resuming 114 may be maintained as part ofthe consumption profile 102. The consumption profile 102 may alsocontain user preferences in connection with pause and resume. Forexample, a user may prefer that content 128 is paused when a mobiledevice enters standby mode, but not when a mobile device is powered off.In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be affected by and/orfacilitate mediation and settlement 112. Information contained in theconsumption profile 102 may be used to accomplish mediation andsettlement 112. Mediation and settlement 112 may occur among content 128providers, dealers, affiliates, distributors, advertisers and otherconstituents and users of the mobile media platform 100.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may include informationregarding content 128. The information may include the types of content128, as described herein, and the sources of content 128, as describedherein. In an embodiment, the consumption profile 102 may take intoaccount the source of a request. For example, different parameters andattributes may be associated with a request for content 128 originatingon a social networking or Web 2.0 website than for a request originatingon a mobile device for dedicated video delivery. In an embodiment,through the consumption profile 102, the origin of a request may impactmediation and settlement 112 associated with the request. For example, arequest initiated through a retail channel may be subject to differentpricing terms than a request initiated through a Web 2.0 website. In anembodiment, the content 128 may be web content 130. As part of theconsumption profile 102, web content 130 may be associated with specificencoding profiles and the network profile for web content 130 may onlyinclude a subset of all available networks. In embodiments, the userprofile may include user preferences in connection with web content 130.For example, web content 130 may be associated with higher costs andbandwidth usage so a user may prefer to receive lower quality webcontent 130 or prohibit access to web content 130.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may impact and be impacted byingestion 118. In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 may specifythe ingestion parameters. In an embodiment, aspects of the consumptionprofile 102 may be specified as a result of ingestion 118. Inembodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be hosted. In embodiments aconsumption profile 102 may specify hosting 132 attributes andparameters. In embodiments, hosting parameters and attributes may becaptured in a consumption profile 102.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may impact the delivery ofcontent 120. A consumption profile 102 may impact the content 128 thatis delivered to a user. For example, based on user preferences, theconsumption profile 102 may result in arts content 128 being deliveredto a user over sports content 128. In embodiments, a consumption profile102 may impact how content 128 is delivered to a user. For example,encoding and technical delivery parameters for certain types of content128 as included in the consumption profile 102 may determine the networktechnology over and quality level at which an item of content 128 isdelivered. In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may determine whencontent 128 is delivered to a user. For example, based on historicaluser behavior which is included in the consumption profile 102, themobile media platform 100 may provide morning news content 128 to a userat 9 am since the user historically accessed such content 128 at suchtime. In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be used to assistwith the targeted delivery of advertisements to a user.

In embodiments, the ingestion, encoding, transcoding, hosting anddelivery of content 128 may be optimized 134 based on a consumptionprofile 102. The consumption profile 102 may contain information whichallows the mobile media platform 100 to optimize 134 the ingestion,encoding, transcoding, hosting and delivery of content 128. For example,in connection with delivery of an item of sports content 128, thenetwork profile may contain information regarding the characteristics ofthe available networks, the device profile 202 may contain technicalcharacteristics of the device and the user profile may contain the factthat the user prefers to view sports content 128 at the highest possibleresolution and frame rate regardless of cost. Based on this information,the mobile media platform 100 may facilitate delivery of content 128 insatisfaction of all the parameters.

In embodiments, information contained in a consumption profile 102 mayform metadata that is included with content 128 in a single file 138. Inembodiments, metadata included in a single file with content 128 mayform part of a consumption profile 102 and/or may correspond toinformation that is actionable based on the information included in theconsumption profile 102. For example, based on network conditions andinformation in a consumption profile 102 it may be determined that anitem of content 128 encoded at 20 frames per second is optimal fordelivery. The metadata included as part of a single file 138 containingcontent 128 may include information regarding the frame rate, allowingfor the selection and delivery of content 128 with the optimal framerate. In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be stored, such asin a storage 122 facility.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may impact one or more userinterfaces 140 of the mobile media platform 100 and/or a mobile device.In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 may impact the look and feelof a user interface 140, including skins applied to a user interface140, sliders provided as part of a user interface 140, the speed andsensitivity of the user interface 140 and the like. In an embodiment,the consumption profile 102 may impact the menus and/or tabs of the userinterface 140, including the order and presence or absence of certaintabs, menus and menu items. In embodiments, a consumption profile 102may impact rendering of a user interface itself, in addition to content128 accessed through the user interface 140. In embodiments, aconsumption profile 102 may impact the content 128 provided on astart-up screen and the types of information that are prominentlydisplayed in a display. In an embodiment, one or more consumptionprofiles 102 may be managed through a user interface 140. Inembodiments, messages, notifications and alerts may be provided inconnection with a consumption profile 102.

In embodiments, content 128 discovery may be impacted and facilitated bya consumption profile 102. In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102may impact searching. In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 may beused to rank, filter and cluster search results. In an example, a userprofile which favors sports content 128 may result in a higher rankingfor content 128 search results for the Blue Jays baseball team than forthe birds when a user searches for “blue jays” for his or her mobiledevice. In an example, search results may be filtered based on a deviceprofile to exclude content 128 that cannot be accessed on a particulardevice. In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 may be used topresent recommendations. In an embodiment, recommendations may be basedon a consumption profile 102. For example, recommendations may be madebased on user preferences. In an example, a user profile may list afavorite sports team and the mobile media platform 100 may recommend tothe user new content 128 relating to that team as it becomes available.

In an embodiment, location information and location intelligence 148 maybe included in a consumption profile 102. In an embodiment, the locationinformation and location intelligence component of a consumption profile102 may be used to rank, filter and cluster search results, recommendcontent 128, target advertisements and the like. In embodiments, aconsumption profile 102 may enable personalization of user experience152. A consumption profile 102 may include user preferences allowing theplatform to ensure that the user experience is personalized to theseuser preferences. In an embodiment, the mobile media platform 100 mayinclude a personal entertainment server and/or interactive programmingguide and the content 128 recommended through the server and/or guidemay be influenced by a consumption profile 102.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may impact social networking150 and social networking aspects of the mobile media platform 100,including content referral, content rating, gifting, forums, gifting,buddy list management, peer-to-peer management, communities of interest,profile page, dMail, points, message boards, newsletter, shop, home,advertising, notifications, sharing content 128 on mobile devices andthe like. In an embodiment, user content 128 rating may take intoaccount consumption profiles 102 associated with various users. Theratings for a particular item of content 128 provided to a user may beweighted for similarities between that user's consumption profile 102and the consumption profiles 102 of the users who rated the content 128.For example, if users with a particular device profile rated the content128 as poor and users with a particular device profile rated the content128 high, then a user with a device provide similar to the first groupshould be informed that the content 128 received a low rating, not amedium rating. In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may containuser preferences regarding opting in or out of certain social networkingaspects. For example, a user may elect to maintain privacy of thecontent 128 the user has viewed and not have his viewing behaviorincluded in even aggregate public data.

In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 may impact e-commerce 154and e-billing aspects of a mobile media platform 100. In an embodiment,a consumption profile 102 may be integrated with digital rightsmanagement. In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 may includeinformation relating to user preferences regarding digital rightsmanagement 158. In an embodiment, a consumption profile 102 may includeinformation relating to a device profile in respect of digital rightsmanagement. For example, the device profile for a particular device mayindicate that it does not support digital rights management. As a resultthe mobile media platform 100 may restrict certain content 128 subjectto digital rights management from being provided to the device. Inembodiments, a consumption profile 102 may include information fromvarious reports generated by the mobile media platform 100, includingtransaction logs, event logs, royalty reports, recommendation reportsand the like. In an embodiment, the platform may generate reports basedon one or more consumption profiles 102, in whole or in part. Inembodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be managed through anadministrative user interface. In embodiments, a consumption profile 102may impact the administrative aspects of a mobile media platform 100,including account management, preference management, client and/orserver management, profiles, registries, and the like.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may impact advertising 164.Aspects of a consumption profile 102 may be used to targetadvertisements. For example, advertisements for device accessories maybe targeted based on the device profile. Advertisements for businesseslocated close to the user's home and place of employment may be targetedbased on user biographical information included in the consumptionprofile 102. Advertisements for particular content 128 may be targetedbased on a user's past viewing behavior as captured in the consumptionprofile 102. Referring to FIG. 45, in embodiments, an ad fulfillmentengine 4520 may utilize information provided in the consumption profile102 to deliver and target content 128, including advertisements 128, tocertain mobile devices 4528. For example, an advertising objective ofthe ad fulfillment engine may be to deliver a certain number of ads, toa certain demographic of users, for a certain advertiser, during acertain time period. The ad fulfillment engine 4520 can use consumptionprofiles 102 to determine the demographic of certain users and to tailorthe delivery of each ad.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may impact the security 168aspects of the platform, including authentication, authorization,passwords, purchase verification, access control, biometricidentification on the mobile device, encryption, access security and thelike. In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may impact the billingaspects of the platform, including collection, pricing, billing,mediation, settlement, reporting and the like.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may enable and/or facilitateintegration with other systems 172, including carrier systems, content128 provider systems, systems of mobile devices, ad servers,Internet-based systems, web-based systems, billing systems, contentdelivery systems, encoding and transcoding systems, storage systems,social networking systems, hosting systems, ingestion systems, securitysystems, search engines, mobile search engines and the like. Integrationmay be accomplished using hard coding, loose coupling, over a network,using application programming interfaces, using interfaces and the like.

In embodiments, aspects of the architecture 174 of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be captured in a consumption profile 102. Inembodiments, the consumption profile 102 may include informationrelating to one or more of the application layer, business module layer,system layer, thin client, rich client, device registry, component layerand the like. In embodiments the consumption profile 102 may containdetailed information regarding the architecture of the platform. Forexample, in connection with the peer-to-peer management aspect of thecomponent layer, the consumption profile 102 may contain detailedinformation regarding buddy list management, browser interface,streaming service, off-portal billing, customer service representatives,self-care management, content 128 filter management, gifting, encoding,transcoding, download service, operator billing, advertisement manager,notification management, forum/blog/rant, content 128 ingestion, devicemanagement, pricing, management console, profile management, usercontent 128 rating, content 128 management, delivery management, usagecollection, storefront, user registry, user content 128 referral and thelike.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be associated withpurchasing, shopping and store front applications 178. In embodiments, aconsumption profile 102 may be associated with various channels of theplatform, including distribution channels, wholesale channels, retailchannels, mobile operators, web 2.0 sites, device manufacturers, contentproviders, retailers and the like. In embodiments, a consumption profile102 may be associated with games.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be associated with varioususers of the platform 184, including end users, consumers, advertisers,marketers, content providers, content owners, networks, broadcasters,media companies, mobile carriers, record companies, movie studios,regulators, mobile device designers, mobile device manufacturers, mobiledevice offerors, mobile service consolidators, affiliates and the like.Types of users may include content providers, content consumers,infrastructure providers, facilitators and the like. In embodiments,each user of the platform may have its own consumption profile 102. Inembodiments, a given consumption profile 102 may contain informationrelating to various users of the platform.

In embodiments, a consumption profile 102 may be associated with variousbusiness models 160, including short code and bar code campaigns, whitelabel, private label, subscription, per-use, pre-paid, post-paid, freetrial, gifting, begging, distribution initiated on deck, distributioninitiated off-deck, distribution initiated via short code, viraldistribution, ad-supported models (such as bulk, per view,click-through, search keyword auction, ad media, banner ads, audio/videobumpers, splash screens, interstitials, location based and the like),revenue share management, content provider, mobile operator and thelike. In embodiments, each business model may have its own consumptionprofile 102. In embodiments, a given consumption profile 102 may containinformation relating to various business models.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with advanced encoding and/or transcoding. Inembodiments, encoding and transcoding for broadcast content maydifferent from encoding and transcoding for unicast/multicast content asdiscussed herein. For example, unicast/multicast content may bepre-encoded, such as based on a schedule, or may be encoded on demand.Broadcast content may be encoded in a live linear manner taking intoconsideration the network, device, delivery method, available bandwidthand the like. In embodiments, switching between broadcast andunicast/multicast content may be associated with automated contenttagging. In embodiments tags may be used to associated broadcast andunicast/multicast content.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with pausing and resuming playback. In anembodiment, the playing of broadcast content may be paused whileunicast/multicast content is accessed. The broadcast content may belater resumed. In an embodiment, the playing of unicast/multicastcontent may be paused while broadcast content is accessed. Theunicast/multicast content may then be later resumed. In embodiments,switching between broadcast and unicast/multicast content may beassociated with mediation and settlement. Mediation and settlement mayoccur among content providers, dealers, affiliates, distributors,advertisers and other constituents and users of the mobile mediaplatform. Media data records may be generated for broadcast andunicast/multicast content. Media data records generated for broadcastand unicast/multicast content may be aggregated and normalized. Inembodiments, the content may be advertisements and mediation andsettlement may involve payment by certain advertisers to otherconstituents and users of the platform. In embodiments, the content maybe creative content and mediation and settlement may involve payment tocertain content owners and providers.

In an embodiment, at least one of the broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be web content. The content delivered to the mobile devicemay be sent from the web or be sent to the device based on inputs usingthe web. For example, a web user may use a website to direct content tothe mobile device of a friend. The friend may be viewing a broadcastsports event. The content sent using the web may be a clip of aninterview involving a player in the game. The friend may switch from thebroadcast content to the clip and then back to the broadcast content.

In an embodiment, content may be ingested in such a manner to facilitateswitching between broadcast and unicast/multicast content. Ingestion maybe of broadcast content which is provided to a mobile device and/or ofunicast/multicast content which is provided to a mobile device. Theingestion process may associate tags with the content to indicate ifcontent is broadcast or unicast/multicast. In embodiments, the tags mayassist with switching between content. For example, when a user iswatching broadcast content tags associated with the broadcast contentmay enable the mobile media platform to recommend certainunicast/multicast content based on tags associated with theunicast/multicast content.

In an embodiment, the broadcast and/or unicast/multicast content may behosted. In an embodiment, providing broadcast and/or unicast/multicastcontent to a mobile device may be enabled through hosting. For example,unicast/multicast content may be hosted and/or provided to a mobiledevice using hosting through a mobile media platform. Hosting mayimprove the quality of a broadcast and/or unicast/multicast by providingredundancy and buffering.

In an embodiment, delivery of content may be impacted depending onwhether the content is broadcast content and/or unicast/multicastcontent. A mobile media platform may choose between broadcast andunicast/multicast as the delivery method for a particular item ofcontent. A feed from a content catalog may affect content delivery. Inembodiments, a content catalog feed may determine which content isdelivered and in certain embodiments may determine whether to deliverthe content using broadcast or unicast/multicast. In an embodiment,delivery of broadcast and/or multicast content may be in the form of anotification, such as an email, text message or instant message,including a link or reference to the content or with the contentembedded in the notification itself.

In embodiments, the ingestion, encoding, transcoding, hosting anddelivery of content may be optimized in connection with seamlesslyswitching between broadcast and unicast content on a mobile device. Forexample, the network bandwidth for broadcast content and unicast contentmay be compared and the ingestion, encoding, transcoding, hosting anddelivery of content of broadcast and unicast content adjusted so thatthe user is presented with similar quality for each type of content. Inanother embodiment, device profiles and device playback capabilities maybe taken into account. For example, a device may be able to playbackonly a reduced quality version of broadcast content, so the broadcastquality is reduced allowing for delivery of correspondingly higherquality unicast content.

In embodiments, metadata and data may be combined in a single file. Themetadata may include information regarding the content of the fileincluding a description of the content and technical aspects regardingthe content. This information may be used in connection with delivery ofthe content and optimization of ingestion, encoding, transcoding,hosting and delivery. The existence of metadata and data in a singlefile may facilitate the delivery of and switching between broadcast andunicast/multicast content. In an embodiment, the metadata included in aunicast content file may contain information about broadcast content tobe associated with this file and a URL associated with the schedules forsuch broadcast content. Using this information the mobile media platformmay recommend to the user a list of related broadcast content currentlybeing or soon to be broadcast. The mobile media platform may containstorage functionality and facilities for storage of broadcast and/orunicast/multicast content and information related to such content.

In embodiments, the application enabling switching between broadcast andunicast/multicast content may include a user interface. The userinterface may contain menus, sliders, icons and items specific to eachof broadcast, unicast and multicast content. The user skin or appearanceof the user interface may change depending on the broadcast, unicast andmulticast nature of the content. While providing broadcast content, theuser interface may present links to or recommendations forunicast/multicast content. When providing unicast/multicast content theuser interface may present links or recommendations for broadcastcontent. In embodiments, the links or recommendations may be presentedas part of the content itself or in a frame surrounding the content. Inan embodiment, the user interface may include an administrative userinterface. In an embodiment, the user interface may allow for broadcastand unicast/multicast content to be accessed or displayedsimultaneously.

In embodiments, while displaying or providing access to broadcastcontent the mobile media platform may provide notifications regardingthe broadcast content or associated unicast/multicast content. Inembodiments, while displaying or providing access to unicast/multicastcontent the mobile media platform may provide notifications regardingthe unicast/multicast content or associated broadcast content. Thenotifications may include links to related content or may benotifications of charges incurred. The notifications may beadvertisements for related goods and services. The mobile media platformmay provide a notification to a user of the upcoming broadcast ofcertain content that is recommended based on the users' consumptionprofile.

In an embodiment, a mobile media platform may allow searching of bothbroadcast and unicast/multicast content. Searching may be based on thecontent, data, metadata, tags and content catalog feed. Search resultsfor associated broadcast and unicast/multicast content may be groupedtogether. In an embodiment, a search result involving the broadcast of alive concert event may be clustered with search results for unicastmusic videos and interviews featuring the artists performing at theconcert.

In an embodiment, a mobile media platform may present recommendations.In embodiments, while displaying or providing access to broadcastcontent the mobile media platform may provide recommendations inconnection with the broadcast content, which may include associatedunicast/multicast content. In embodiments, while displaying or providingaccess to unicast/multicast content the mobile media platform mayprovide recommendations in connection with the unicast/multicastcontent, which may include associated broadcast content. Therecommendations may be generated by a recommendation engine. Therecommendations may be based on a consumption profile and/or contentcatalog feed. The recommendations may be based on content ratings.

In an embodiment, location information and location intelligence may beused to select the optimal technology for delivery of broadcast and/orunicast/multicast content. In an embodiment location information andlocation intelligence may be used in connection with contentrecommendations. In embodiments, location information and locationintelligence may be used to enforce black out rules in connection withbroadcast content. In an embodiment, using location information andlocation intelligence, while a user if viewing broadcast content linksto unicast/multicast content relating to the location and context of theuser may be presented to the user. For example, as a user is watching abroadcast of a program directed at home improvements the user may beprovided with a link to a unicast advertisement for a home improvementstore in the vicinity of the user.

In an embodiment, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be personalized to a particular user. The mobile mediaplatform may include an interactive programming guide. In embodiments,the interactive programming guide may contain both broadcast andunicast/multicast content. The mobile media platform may include apersonal entertainment server which may present recommended unicastcontent and a list of often viewed broadcast channels.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with social networking and social networkingaspects of the mobile media platform, including content referral,content rating, gifting, forums, gifting, buddy list management,peer-to-peer management, communities of interest, profile page, dMail,points, message boards, newsletter, shop, home, advertising,notifications, sharing content on mobile devices and the like. In anembodiment, a group of users watching a given broadcast may communicatewith each other in a forum associated with that broadcast. In anexample, the broadcast may be of a particular sporting event and theforum may be a forum for fans of the home team. In another embodiment,while watching a particular broadcast, a group of users may be able toshare with each other links to unicast/multicast content relating to thebroadcast. The related unicast content may be provided as a gift fromone user to another user. In embodiments, the group of users may beviewing multicast content instead of broadcast content.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with the e-commerce aspects of the mobilemedia platform, including Billing, pricing, event tracking, bundling,tiered services, subscriptions, purchasing content, previewing contentand the like. In embodiments, switching between broadcast andunicast/multicast content may be associated with the rights managementaspects of the mobile media platform, including digital rightsmanagement, digital rights administration and computing royalties owesto particular owners of intellectual property.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with the reporting aspects of the platform,including transaction logs, event logs, royalty reports, recommendationreports and the like. In embodiments, reports may be accessed from a webinterface. In embodiments, switching between broadcast andunicast/multicast content may be associated with the administrativeaspects of the mobile media platform, including account management,preference management, client and/or server management, profiles,registries, and the like. In embodiments, switching between broadcastand unicast/multicast content may be associated with an administrativeuser interface which may vary by users, administrators, carriers,broadcast content provider, unicast/multicast content provider, and thelike.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with providing advertising content.Advertising content may be provided as broadcast and/orunicast/multicast content. Advertising content may be an interstitialadvertisement, banner ad, in stream ad, ad placed in the content itself,ad framing the content, an ad appearing before or after other content,and the like. In an embodiment, an advertisement may be interactive andmay contain links to other content. In embodiments, advertising contentmay be targeted on the basis of a consumption profile, data about theuser and user preferences, location information and locationintelligence and using an ad fulfillment engine.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with the security aspects of the platform,including authentication, authorization, passwords, purchaseverification, access control, biometric identification on the mobiledevice, encryption, access security and the like. In embodiments,switching between broadcast and unicast/multicast content may beassociated with the billing aspects of the platform, includingcollection, pricing, billing, mediation, settlement, reporting and thelike. In embodiments, access to broadcast and/or unicast/multicastcontent may be on a pay per duration and/or subscription model. Inembodiments, the billing may be integrated with operator billingsystems, carrier billing systems, third party payment processors,broadcasters, unicast/multicast content providers and the like.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be integrated with other systems, including carrier systems,content provider systems, systems of mobile devices, ad servers,Internet-based systems, web-based systems, billing systems, contentdelivery systems, encoding and transcoding systems, storage systems,social networking systems, hosting systems, ingestion systems, securitysystems, search engines, mobile search engines and the like. Integrationmay be accomplished using hard coding, loose coupling, over a network,using application programming interfaces, using interfaces and the like.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with and supported by the architecture of theplatform as described herein. In embodiments, switching betweenbroadcast and unicast/multicast content may be associated with a storefront. In an embodiment, the store front may provide access to unicastcontent while broadcast content is being viewed. In another embodiment,the store front may enable the purchase of broadcast and/orunicast/multicast content.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with various channels of the platform,including distribution channels, wholesale channels, retail channels,mobile operators, web 2.0 sites, device manufacturers, contentproviders, retailers and the like. In embodiments, switching betweenbroadcast and unicast/multicast content may be associated with games.For example, a unicast game may be provided in connection with broadcastcontent. In embodiments, switching between broadcast andunicast/multicast content may be associated with various users of theplatform, including end users, consumers, advertisers, marketers,content providers, content owners, networks, broadcasters, mediacompanies, mobile carriers, record companies, movie studios, regulators,mobile device designers, mobile device manufacturers, mobile deviceofferors, mobile service consolidators, affiliates and the like. Typesof users may include content providers, content consumers,infrastructure providers, facilitators and the like.

In embodiments, switching between broadcast and unicast/multicastcontent may be associated with various business models, including shortcode and bar code campaigns, white label, private label, subscription,per-use, pre-paid, post-paid, free trial, gifting, begging, distributioninitiated on deck, distribution initiated off-deck, distributioninitiated via short code, viral distribution, ad-supported models (suchas bulk, per view, click-through, search keyword auction, ad media,banner ads, audio/video bumpers, splash screens, interstitials, locationbased and the like), revenue share management, content provider, mobileoperator and the like.

Referring to FIG. 46, an advanced encoding/transcoding 104 system can begrown to form a complex relationship between content providers 4602 andcontent consumers 4604 through the use of complex internal interactionsbetween content sources 4608 and encoding facilities 4610.

Referring to FIG. 47 an embodiment of pre-encoding is provided. Anadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility may create intermediateencodings 4708 by pre-processing 4704 the source content 4702, forexample to de-speckle, de-interlace, and convert to MPEG-2 format, whichcan then be fed into subsequent encoders 4710 to produce tertiaryresults such as specific encodings 4712 for carriers. Encoding andnormalization can thereby occur independently from the device-specificencodings.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with automatedcontent tag management 108. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitatean association of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with automatedcontent tag management 108. A combination of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with automated content tag management 108 mayfacilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132,delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobilecontent 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may select an encoding method based onmobile device 802 acceptance and/or support of a tagging 108 formatassociated with an encoding method. Tagging 108 related to the content128 or metadata associated with the content 128 may influence howadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 responds to the tagged content 128. Inthis way, tagging 108 may facilitate using rules associated with anencoding/transcoding 104 phase of ingestion 118 to setup encoding anddelivery.

Enhanced encoding/transcoding 104 may support tags 108 provided withincontent 128, such as a camera model number within an image taken by thecamera. A flexible tag model associated with a mobile media platform 100may allow for such use.

Tags 108 may further support a composite profiling process that mayenable transcoding based on information in the tag in addition to otherfactors related to consumption profile 102 parameters. A content tag mayindicate that digital rights restrict the content 128 from being encodedin certain low resolution formats 808. A content tag may indicate thataudio portions of the content 128 may preferably be encoded with anencoding method based on the encoding method selected for the visualportion of the content 128. A tag may indicate a portion of the content128 is dynamic and another portion is nearly static, resulting inadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 selecting appropriate encoders foreach portion of content 128. In another example, a tag that identifiescontent 128 encoding format may allow an automatic encoding/transcoding104 module to self-determine what is being encoded. Without tagging 108,the encoding process may require the content 128 to be examined or aheader of the content 128 to be included to determine an encoding formatof the content 128.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with pause andresume 114 functionality or features. A mobile media platform 100 mayfacilitate an association of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withpause and resume 114. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104with pause and resume 114 may facilitate content discovery 144,ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation &settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated bythe mobile media platform 100.

Pause and resume 114, when applied to an encoded stream being deliveredto a mobile device 802 may impact advanced encoding/transcoding 104.Pausing delivery may enable encoding output to be redirected to a cacheor buffer. Pause and resume 114 functionality that may detect packet bypacket mobile content 128 transfers, may be applied to encoding toenable advanced encoding capabilities such as in stream encodingchanges.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with mediation andsettlement 112. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with mediation andsettlement 112. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withmediation and settlement 112 may facilitate content discovery 144,ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobilemedia platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with content 128,content type, source, and parameters. A mobile media platform 100 mayfacilitate an association of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withcontent 128. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withcontent 128 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118,encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and useracceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform 100.

Encoding and/or transcoding may be based at least in part on contenttype. Encoding of audio content 128 may be different than transcoding ofvideo content 128, which may be different than encoding of compositecontent 128. Live content 128 may require on-demand encoding, whereasstored content 128 may be processed to generate pre-encoded content 128.Sources of content 128 may impact advanced encoding/transcoding 104.User created content 128 may be pre-encoded and available from externalhosts in several common formats 808. Alternatively user created content128 may be irregularly constructed, causing advanced encoding todetermine a best fit encoding method based on, for example, trial anderror encoding.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with web content130. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association ofadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 with web content 130. A combination ofadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 with web content 130 may facilitatecontent discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100. Web content 130 may bedirectly streamable from an internes server, however web content 130 mayhave to be transcoded to be accepted by mobile devices 802. Web content130 that is readily accessible at high bandwidth, may not be pre-encodedbut rather may always be encoded on-demand to allow the content 128source and the encoding to remain independent, yet allow a wide varietyof mobile users to access the web content 130.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with ingestion 118.A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with ingestion 118. A combination of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with ingestion 118 may facilitate contentdiscovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120,mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100. An advancedencoding/transcoding 104 facility may include ingestion 118 of externalcontent 128. Ingestion and advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may beautomatically activated.

A self-aware ingestion 118 module may be part of the advancedencoding/transcoding 104 facility or it may communicate with theadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility to deliver content 128 to bemanaged. Self-aware ingestion 118 may facilitate normalizing content 128so that content 128 from any type and any format may be normalized, suchas through recoding and format conversion, into a format useable by theplatform and/or the advanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility.Encoding, recoding, and transcoding may be performed by the self-awareingestion 118 module. Alternatively, the self-aware ingestion 118capability may be an attachment to an encoding process of the platformso that ingestion and encoding may be operated under separateconstraints. Self-aware ingestion 118 may determine what encoding,recoding, transcoding, format conversion, filtering, and the like isneeded based on ingestion 118 parameters associated with the advancedencoding/transcoding 104 facility and/or the platform. If newlypresented content 128 is in an encoding that is not supported, theself-aware ingestion 118 module may order recoding from an attachedencoding facility before directing the content 128 to the advancedencoding/transcoding 104 facility. In an example, a self-aware ingestion118 module may determine that a transcoding process exists to recodenewly presented content 128 from it's presented encoding to a preferredencoding. In such a situation, the self-aware ingestion 118 module mayperform the transcoding to present the content 128 in the preferredencoding.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with hosting 132. Amobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with hosting 132. A combination of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with hosting may facilitate content discovery144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120,mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100. A mobile media platform100 may host content 128 that has been encoded or transcoded by anadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility. The facility may encode rawcontent 128 into one or more formats 808 for hosting, thereby enabling ahost to have fast access to the hosted encoded content 128 for fasterdelivery when the content 128 is requested by a mobile device 802 thatsupports the one or more hosted formats 808.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with contentdelivery 120. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an associationof advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with content delivery 120. Acombination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with content delivery120 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding,hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptanceof mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.Encoding may be performed on-demand to delivery content 128 as a streamfor playback of video, audio, and the like on mobile devices 802.Content 128 may be delivered to a mobile device 802 or distribution 182portal from a wide variety of content 128 sources and anencoding/transcoding 104 facility may support converting the sourcedcontent 128 as it is sourced so that it can be continuously presentedfor delivery 120. Mobile devices 802 may provide content 128 to themobile media platform 100 that the encoding/transcoding 104 facility mayrecode for delivery 120 to another mobile device 802 or distribution 182portal. Self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 may be directed towardencoding for a delivery method. Delivery methods such as streaming,download, progressive download, MMS, WAP push, and the like may eachimpact encoding in different ways. Encoding methods may be combinedduring a consumption session so that delivery 120 may be separated fromencoding method. In an example, live linear content 128 may be encodedon-demand and pre-encoded advertisements may be inserted in the deliverystream.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with optimization134. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association ofadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 with optimization 134. A combinationof advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with optimization 134 mayfacilitate optimization 134 of content discovery 144, ingestion 118,encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 120, and useracceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform 100. Encoding/transcoding 104 may be employed to generateencoded content 128 that may optimize response time for a request forthe content 128 by encoding content 128 into formats 808 that arepopular or in demand A carrier may specify preferred delivery formats808 during peak network load periods to optimize availability of thenetwork and advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be used to recodecontent 128 into the preferred formats 808 (e.g. lower resolution)during peak periods. An encoding format may be determined based on aconsumption profile 102 associated with a device 802 or distribution 182portal requesting or providing content 128 and an advancedencoding/transcoding 104 facility may process content 128 associatedwith the determined format. Encoding/transcoding 104 may be optimized byan advanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility based on characteristicsof the content 128, such as if the content 128 is talking head content128 that does not change rapidly versus sports content 128 that maychange continuously.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with combiningmetadata with creative content 128 in a single file 138. A mobile mediaplatform 100 may facilitate an association of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with combining metadata with creative content128 in a single file 138. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding104 with combining metadata with creative content 128 in a single file138 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding,hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptanceof mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.Encoding/transcoding 104 may include inserting metadata into a file withencoded creative content 128 so that a receiving device 802 or portalmay determine from the metadata information about the encoding, such asencoder version, source encoding format, on-demand versus pre-encodedencoding, and the like.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with content storage122. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association ofadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 with content storage 122. Acombination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with content storage122 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding,hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptanceof mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with a userinterface 140. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an associationof advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with a user interface 140. Acombination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with a user interface140 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding,hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptanceof mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with notifications,messages, and alerts. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with notifications,messages, and alerts 142. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding104 with notifications, messages, and alerts 142 may facilitate contentdiscovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120,mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with contentdiscovery 144. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an associationof advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with content discovery 144. Acombination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with content discovery144 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding,hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptanceof mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.Automatic encoding/transcoding 104 of content 128 may be based oncontent 128 that is discovered, therefore as new content 128 isdiscovered it may be presented to an advanced encoding/transcodingfacility for automated encoding/transcoding 104. A mobile media platform100 with self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 capability may acquire ordetect content 128 in a wide variety of formats 808 and types that maybe readily transcoded by the self-aware encoding/transcoding 104 module.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with delivery ordevice 802 location 148. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with delivery or device802 location 148. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104with delivery or device 802 location 148 may facilitate contentdiscovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120,mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100. Because mobile device 802location may dynamically change, an advanced encoding/transcoding 104facility may react to delivery location changes by adjusting encoding.In an example, as a user moves from a WiFi hot spot to a locationserviced only by a standard cellular network, encoding of content 128being delivered to the device 802 may be switched accordingly. While inthe WiFi hot spot, encoding may deliver very high quality encodedcontent 128 to take advantage of the WiFi bandwidth and may switch tolower resolution encoding to continue to deliver the requested content128 within the constraints of the network connection that is availableto the user device.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with personalization152. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association ofadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 with personalization 152. Acombination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with personalization152 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding,hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptanceof mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100. Anadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility may react to personalization152 as determined by, for example, a user profile so that when a userlogs onto the platform, the users preferences relating to encoding mayadjust how content 128 is encoded for delivery to the user. When anotheruser logs onto the platform from the same device, different encodingpreferences may be applied by the advanced encoding/transcoding 104facility.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with socialnetworking 150. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with social networking150. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with socialnetworking 150 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118,encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and useracceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform 100. Social networking may facilitate user to user sharing ofcontent 128, such as by placing the content 128 or a link to the content128 on a user's social networking site. When a user attempts to sharecontent 128 with another user with a device 802 that does not supportthe format in which the content 128 being shared is encoded, advancedencoding/transcoding 104 may be employed to recode the content 128 intoa format acceptable to the target user device. This encoding/transcoding104 may be performed automatically as the content 128 is transferredover the network from one user to another without either user beingconscious of the transcoding operation.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with e-commercebilling 154. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an associationof advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with e-commerce billing 154. Acombination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with e-commerce billing154 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding,hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptanceof mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with rightsmanagement 158. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with rights management158. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with rightsmanagement 158 may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118,encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and useracceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with reporting 124.A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with reporting. A combination of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with reporting may facilitate content discovery144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120,mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100. Reporting may includeinformation about utilization of an encoding/transcoding 104 facility toprovide content 128. Encoding/transcoding 104 utilization may bedetermined based on characteristics of the content 128 delivered, suchas live linear streamed content 128 may have utilized on-demand encoding

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with platformadministration 162. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with platformadministration. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withplatform administration may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, anduser acceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with advertising164. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association ofadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 with advertising 164. A combination ofadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 with advertising 164 may facilitatecontent discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100. An advancedencoding/transcoding 104 facility may interact with an advertising 164fulfillment engine to encode advertisements into formats 808 that arecompatible with content 128 being provided to users so that the content128 and the advertisements may be seamlessly stitched together duringdelivery. On-demand encoding/transcoding 104 facilitates real-timeadvertisement selection and insertion into content 128 being delivered.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with security 168. Amobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with security. A combination of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with security may facilitate content discovery144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120,mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with billing 170. Amobile media platform 100 may facilitate an association of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with billing. A combination of advancedencoding/transcoding 104 with billing may facilitate content discovery144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120,mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with third partyintegration 172. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with third partyintegration 172. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withthird party integration 172 may facilitate content discovery 144,ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobilemedia platform 100. Advanced encoding and/or transcoding may be offeredas a service by the platform to third party content 128 managementsystems. An advanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility may be integratedwith a third party content 128 management system to provide encodingtranscoding for content 128 managed by the system. In an example, acorporation may employ encoding to exchange content 128 over a privatecorporate wireless network. To support a wide variety of devices 802seamlessly on the private wireless network, content 128 may be routedthrough an advanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility to ensure thecontent 128 meets the requirements of the destination such as a server,database, executive handheld mobile device, sales person's mobiledevice, and the like. In another example, a third party may delivercontent 128 to the mobile media platform 100 for advancedencoding/transcoding 104, and may receive in reply a Uniform ResourceIdentifier (URI) that may contain a link to the resulting advancedencoded/transcoded content 128 that may be published and content 128managed by the mobile media platform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with an embodimentof the platform. An embodiment of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 inan embodiment of the platform may provide an architecture 174 that mayfacilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132,delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobilecontent 128 facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.Encoding/transcoding 104 may be hardware based, software based, hardwareand software based. A particular encoding format may be generated byhardware based on availability of the hardware or by software if therequired hardware encoding embodiment is not available. The architectureof an embodiment, and therefore the cost to construct, license, operate,and maintain encoding and/or transcoding on the architecture may bebased on the mix of hardware and software dedicated to encoding.

Referring to FIG. 48, an advanced encoding/transcoding 104 facility mayinclude distributed computing. The advanced encoding/transcoding 104facility may divide encoding workload between at least two groups ofmachines: admin servers 4802 that may perform management of encodingwork, and worker machines 4804 that may perform encoding. The servers4802 may manage incoming encoding job requests and delegate the workrequired to complete the job. The work itself, which may becomputationally intensive tasks, such as collecting, encodingespecially, and publishing encoded content 4818 may be delivered to agroup of processors 4804 that are specifically optimized to handle suchtasks. These delegate processors may collectively be known as the‘encoding farm’ 4814. Each processor 4804 may generate any one of therequired encoded content outputs 4808, 4810, 4812 based on the encodingwork delegated.

The administrative server 4802 workload may be extremely light comparedto the workload handled by the encoding farm 4814, which permitsrelatively few servers 4802 to manage very large numbers of workers4804. Furthermore, the numbers of servers, workers, and server-workercombinations can be increased arbitrarily, providing practicallyinfinite encoding capacity.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with purchasing,shopping, and store-front applications 178. A mobile media platform 100may facilitate an association of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withpurchasing, shopping, and store-front applications. A combination ofadvanced encoding/transcoding 104 with purchasing, shopping, andstore-front applications may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, anduser acceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform 100.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with distribution182 channel applications. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with distribution 182channel applications. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104with distribution 182 channel applications may facilitate contentdiscovery 144, ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120,mediation/settlement 112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128facilitated by the mobile media platform 100. From an encodingperspective, a distribution 182 channel or portal may be treatedsimilarly to a mobile device 802 in that encoding and transcoding may bebased on distribution 182 portal characteristics that may be captured ina distribution 182 portal profile. Encoded content 128 that is providedto a distribution 182 channel may be encoded on-demand or may bepre-encoded.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with games 180 andnetwork gaming. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with games and networkgaming. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with gamesand network gaming may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion 118,encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, and useracceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform 100. Multi-player network gaming may require exchange ofcontent 128 among player devices 802. An advanced encoding/transcoding104 capability may allow devices 802 with incompatible encodingrequirements to be used in an on-line gaming session by recoding thecontent 128 as it is exchanged over a network among the players.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with users orparticipants 184. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with users orparticipants. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withusers or participants may facilitate content discovery 144, ingestion118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement 112, anduser acceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform 100. User preferences, user feedback, and the like may beconsidered when automatically encoding/transcoding 104 content 128delivered to or received from a user.

Advanced encoding/transcoding 104 may be associated with mobile mediabusiness models 160. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 with mobile mediabusiness models. A combination of advanced encoding/transcoding 104 withmobile media business models may facilitate content discovery 144,ingestion 118, encoding, hosting 132, delivery 120, mediation/settlement112, and user acceptance of mobile content 128 facilitated by the mobilemedia platform 100. A business model that targets low cost distribution182 of content 128 may favor low resolution encoding over highresolution encoding.

Referring again to FIGS. 9 to 13, automated tagging may be associatedwith or combined with various other aspects of the mobile mediaplatform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with the content beingdistributed, such as audio, video, text, images, photos, applications,games, data, ring tones, wall paper, fonts, hyperlinks, tables, tabularformatted text, user generated content, media, radio, contentprimitives, composite content, marketing type content, and the like.Tagging 108 may be associated with the characteristics of the content,popularity of the content, length of the content, the individuals ororganizations involved in the production of the content, the source ofthe content, the location of the content, the type of the content,management aspects of the content, technical aspects of the content,user device limitations associated with the content, marketing targetsassociated with the content, and the like. A mobile media platform mayfacilitate an association of automated content tagging 108 with content.A combination of automated content tagging 108 with content mayfacilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform.

In embodiments, tagging 108 may be associated with the characteristicsof the content, such as display resolution, image format, language,audio format, and the like. For instance, with a tag 108 associated withthe language users and advertisers may select only those content itemsthat are associated with a particular language. Similarly, a tag 108associated with a image format may allow the user to select only thosecontent items that will play effectively on their device. Tags 108 mayindicate the length of the content item in order to allow the user toselect only content that is within the timeframe of interest. Tags 108may be associated with the popularity of a content item, and as such,may allow users to select from the most popular items, or keep track ofhow popular an item or show or song is becoming. Advertisers may alsouse popularity tags 108 to select and cost advertisements to beassociated with, or tagged directly into, the content item. Tags 108 maybe associated with the individuals associated with the production of thecontent item, such as the performing artist, the director, the producer,the sponsoring agency, and the like. Tags 108 associated with theperforming artist for instance may allow a user to search for workavailable from the artist, and assemble playlists or collections forthat artist. Tags 108 associated with a sponsoring agency may allow theuser to select content from say an educational association, a certainpublishing house, a government agency, a music label, and the like. Tags108 may be associated with the source or location of the content, whichmay allow the user to select local programming, or programming from aspecific production group, and the like. Tags 108 may be associated withplayback device limitations, such as image resolution, display size,audio quality, speed, and the like. A user may then select only thosecontent items that may allow them to playback content items that runwell on their device.

In embodiments, tagging 108 may improve the quality of experience for auser. For example, a user may want to play some recent TV shows thathave become available. Tags 108 associated with the content may allowthe user to select the most popular items for that week. In addition,tags 108 may make it possible for the user to download only thosecontent items that will play well on their device, selecting itemstagged 108 for the proper display, resolution, link speed, and the like.Subject oriented tags 108 may also allow the user to select topics thatare appealing, and alternately, parents may place limitations on thedownloads of questionable subject matter. In embodiments, the user maybe provided a degree of selection control over content to be viewedthrough the use of tagged 108 content.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with web content 1004,such as video 1004A, music 1004B, pod casts 1004C, audio files 1004D,syndicated shows, PowerPoint slide shows 1004E, word processor documents1004E, and the like. FIG. 10 depicts one embodiment of a block diagramshowing the tagging 108AA of web content 1004 in association with themobile media platform 100. Web content 1004 tagging 108 may beassociated with the type of media, the date of last revision, the dateof collection, the file extension, the URL address of the source,sponsoring agency, display resolution, audio content, trust level of thesite, and the like. Web content 1004 tagging 108 may allow the user tosearch based on the type of media, such as in a user wanting to view podcasts 1004C. In addition, web content 1004 tags 108 may allow the userto select the general category of all available pod casts 1004C, aspecific pod cast 1004C, a popular pod cast 1004C, and the like. Theuser may also be able to take advantage of time stamp tags 108associated with web content 1004, such as when the file was created andwhen the file was collected by the mobile media platform 100. Tags 108may be associated with the file extension for the web content 1004, suchas for a user wanting to search for only PowerPoint 1004E slide showsfor a certain topic, a word processing document 1004E, a pdf document1004E, and the like. A mobile media platform 100 may facilitate anassociation of automated content tagging 108 with web content 1004. Acombination of automated content tagging 108 with web content mayfacilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

In embodiments, the user may also be able to utilized web content 1004tags 108 to pull up the URL for the web content 1004 item that they'vefound, so that they might access it at another time, perhaps from acomputer with greater capabilities. Web content 1004 tagging 108 mayallow for searching based on the sponsoring agency, production group,domain name, and the like, such as looking for web content 1004 from acertain corporation, a college, a broadcasting group, and the like. Webcontent 1004 tags 108 may specify technical aspects of the web material,such as display resolution, that may affect the effectiveness of how theuser views the web content 1004 on their device. Tags 108 may also beavailable for the media characteristics of the web content 1004, such asthe presence of audio, embedded video, live feeds, and the like. Webcontent 1004 is also often associated with trustworthiness of the site,that is, is the site trusted for the type of content delivered, theaccuracy of the content delivered, as well as whether the site is atrusted source in regard to computer malware.

Another example of how web content 1004 tags 108 may be utilized, is inassociation with the news. The internet may generate a continuous, andlarge volume of news material, from a great variety of sources. A usermay have preferences associated with the news they want to receive. Itmay be assumed that a user will firstly want to have the latest news,and so time stamped tags 108 may allow for the filtering of news basedon time. But the user may also have certain personal preferences fornews, such as for certain sources of news, certain types of news, newsfrom specific geographical regions, and the like, and these preferencesmay be stored in a set of personal profile tags 108 that are associatedwith an ID, their device, their name, or the like. In addition, theirmobile communications device may also have performance relatedpreferences, such as associated with display, link speed, processingspeed, and the like, and these preferences may be stored in a set ofdevice profile tags 108. Together, these tags 108 may help specify whichweb content 1004 is to be made available to the user, in this instance,for the latest news. In embodiments, web content tags 108 may be able toimprove the user applicability of web content 1004, selected from thevast quantity of available web content 1004.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with ingestion ofcontent into the mobile media platform for subsequent ingestion 118 anddistribution, such as related to the characteristics of the content, thequality of content being ingested, the source of content, the method ofingestion, the trustworthiness of the content, and the like. Inembodiments, the ingested content may be tagged 108 for the plurality ofcontent characteristics, such as video properties, audio properties,length of video, quality of video, size of text, file format, and thelike. These content tags 108, assigned at the time of ingestion, may bethen stored for subsequent use. In embodiments, these tags 108 may alsobe used internal to the mobile media platform, such as for ingestion 118purposes. Quality of content being ingested may be another importantattribute to be tagged, such as the quality and reliability of thesource, the quality of the data received such as in bit errors, thequality of the data received such as in the resolution level of theimages and/or audio, and the like. Quality may be of concern to users,marketing organizations, as well as the content management facility ofthe mobile media platform, and as such, may be an important attribute toassign tagging 108 to. The source of the content, not only contributesto the initial assessment of quality of the content, but also may be ofinterest to the end users, especially if the user is interested incollecting content from a given source, whether considered by thetagging 108 facility as quality or not. A mobile media platform mayfacilitate an association of automated content tagging 108 withingestion. A combination of automated content tagging 108 with ingestionmay facilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform.

In embodiments, it may be of interest to tag 108 and store the method bywhich the ingested content was acquired, such as in it having beensubmitted by an individual, acquired by polling a third party,collection by a spider, obtained via an interactive web portal, a Webservice API, or the like. Knowing how the material was obtained may helpevaluate the quality of the content for tagging 108, or provide a senseto a user as to its reliability, such as by combining the fact that ithad been submitted by an individual, where the individual was leftunidentified. As a result, a trustworthiness merit may also be assigneda tag 108, where trustworthiness may be determined through a specificsource of information, such a being from a certified trusted source, orfrom a combination of acquired information at ingestion that maycollectively help determine the trustworthiness rating that may beassigned to content at ingestion.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with hosting of content,such as by allowing individuals and organizations to provide their ownwebsites accessible via the Internet Tags 108 associated with hostingmay be associated with what servers or clients have access to thehosting, what connectivity is available, what data centers are involved,what processing was associated with the hosting, whether the hosting isa free service or a paid service, whether the hosting is a sharedservice, whether the host is the primary host, and the like. Tags may beused to publish and un-publish content, date time, or events, cataloglistings, and the like. A mobile media platform may facilitate anassociation of automated content tagging 108 with hosting. A combinationof automated content tagging 108 with hosting may facilitate contentdiscovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104,mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitatedby the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with content delivery104, such as the type of delivery 104, including a file download, astreaming of video, a streaming of video, progressive downloading, andthe like; the size of the delivery 104; combining delivery 104 frommultiple sources; availability of refreshes or updates; associated withconsumption profiles; source of content; and the like. A mobile mediaplatform may facilitate an association of automated content tagging 108with content delivery 104. A combination of automated content tagging108 with content delivery 104 may facilitate content discovery,ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation,settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitated by themobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with the optimization ofingestion 118, encoding 104, transcoding, hosting, and delivery 104 ofcontent, such as the creation of device profiles, bandwidth adjustments,adjustment of ingestion 118 parameters, associated with device playbackcapabilities including independent adjustment of video and audiocapabilities, adjustments in association with digital rights management,and the like. A mobile media platform may facilitate an association ofautomated content tagging 108 with optimization of ingestion 118,encoding 104, transcoding, hosting, and delivery 104.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with combining data andmetadata in a single file, such as repackaging ingested content,providing packaged content in archive files, combining metadata andmultiple versions of the content, type of packaged content (batchingestion 118, single ingestion 118, and real-time ingestion 118),content wrapped in descriptors, and the like. A mobile media platformmay facilitate an association of automated content tagging 108 withcombining data and metadata in a single file. A combination of automatedcontent tagging 108 with combining data and metadata in a single filemay facilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with storage, such asstorage of content data, including metadata, attributes, parameters;online storage; offline storage; provided on the platform or on themobile device; provided through a network; provided on different media,including magnetic storage, optical storage, semiconductor storage, andthe like. A mobile media platform may facilitate an association ofautomated content tagging 108 with storage. A combination of automatedcontent tagging 108 with storage may facilitate content discovery,ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation,settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitated by themobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with a user interface,such as for dynamic rendering, enabling interactivity, viewingthumbnails, facilitating game day tracking, enabling reader features,managing end user presentations, adjusting to device capabilities,skinning, content schedules, daily features, flipbooks, sliders,displaying multiple items at once, split screen applications, framingcontent with links, and the like. A mobile media platform may facilitatean association of automated content tagging 108 with a user interface. Acombination of automated content tagging 108 with a user interface mayfacilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with notifications,messages, and alerts, such as management of notifications, notificationsfor content, notifications for new content, reminders regardingbroadcast of certain content, delivery of messages to a user, trackinguser notification preferences and generating a message when an eventoccurs that matches the user preferences, delivery of operator messages,and the like. Tags may be used to publish and un-publish content, datetime, or events, catalog listings, and the like. A mobile media platformmay facilitate an association of automated content tagging 108 withnotifications, messages, and alerts. A combination of automated contenttagging 108 with notifications, messages, and alerts may facilitatecontent discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104,mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitatedby the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with content discovery144, such as searching, including content, metadata, allowing users tosearch for categories of content, integration to third party searchengines, multiple content store crawls, and the like; recommendations,including recommendation engines, popular clips algorithms, generatingrecommendations via inferred preferences, based on direct input, basedon sensed context, and the like; content catalog feed, including inconnection with search and recommendations, mobile search engines,active push feed, passive pull feed, and the like; content management,including managing digital data; deep linking; popular plays; contentfiltering, content rating, community polling, personalization of contentdelivery 104, tagging 108 of content, front processing, hierarchicalcategory organization, clip-based retrieval, generalized data modeling,consumption profiles, and the like. FIG. 11 depicts one embodiment of ablock diagram showing the tagging in association with content discovery144 in the mobile media platform 100, where content discovery 144 is anintegral part of the content management of the mobile media platform100, and relates to the end user mobile communication facilities 802through the distribution facility 182. Tagging 108 may be used to buildrelationships across content, thereby establishing related content toenhance discovery 144 services. Tags may also be used during discovery144 to restrict content, by location, based on user preferences such asparental control. A mobile media platform may facilitate an associationof automated content tagging 108 with content discovery 144. Acombination of automated content tagging 108 with content discovery 144may facilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform 100.

For example, and in embodiments, a user of a mobile device 802 may havea user profile set up that specifies the content that they wantdownloaded on a regular basis. In addition, the user profile may specifycontent that is undesirable, where the user wants to never receive thiscontent. Content discovery 144 may then be governed through this userprofile, where as content is tagged at ingestion, the content, asspecified in the user profile, is offered for download to the user. Inembodiments, may content discovery filters and algorithms may beutilized in facilitating the delivery of desirable content to the user.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with locationinformation and location intelligence, such as relating to the locationof a mobile device 802, determined or provided by the mobile device,using a GPS, for locating a device on a network, by examiningtransactions and selections made using the device, updating locationinformation, identifying business locations near the user, inconjunction with user content, combined with time of day, and the like.FIG. 12 depicts one embodiment of a block diagram showing the tagging oflocation information and location intelligence in association with themobile media platform 100, where location information and locationintelligence 148 is an integral part of the content management of themobile media platform 100, and relates to the end user mobilecommunication facilities 802 through the distribution facility 182. Amobile media platform may facilitate an association of automated contenttagging 108 with location information and location intelligence. Acombination of automated content tagging 108 with location informationand location intelligence may facilitate content discovery, ingestion118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation, settlement, anduser acceptance of mobile content facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform.

For example, and in embodiments, a user of a mobile device 802 may shoota video with the device 802, and upload it to the mobile media platform100 to be made available. The GPS in the mobile device 802 may thensupply location information along with the video, and as such, the videomay become tagged 108 with location information. Subsequently, a seconduser in the same vicinity, who wants to download any recent local videosshot by individuals with their mobile devices 802 may now be able tofind this new video based on the location tag 108, and download it. Inembodiments, groups of local individual in the same local could sharevideos in near real-time, without actually meeting or knowing oneanother, say while a sporting event.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with personalization ofuser experience, such as personal entertainment, an interactiveprogramming guide, recommendations from communities, serving contentregularly watched by the user, and the like. Tags may also be usedduring discovery to restrict content, by location, based on userpreferences such as parental control. A mobile media platform mayfacilitate an association of automated content tagging 108 withpersonalization of user experience. A combination of automated contenttagging 108 with personalization of user experience may facilitatecontent discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104,mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitatedby the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with social networking,such as user content referring, user content rating, forums, gifting,buddy list management, peer-to-peer management, communities of interest,profile pages, points, message boards, newsletters, shops, homepagechanges, advertising, notifications, sharing content on mobile devices,and the like. A mobile media platform may facilitate an association ofautomated content tagging 108 with social networking. A combination ofautomated content tagging 108 with social networking may facilitatecontent discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104,mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitatedby the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with e-commerce ande-billing, such as billing, pricing, event tracking, bundling, tieredservices, purchasing individual items, previewing, demos, discounts,delivery and monetization of multimedia advertising messages, and thelike. A mobile media platform may facilitate an association of automatedcontent tagging 108 with e-commerce and e-billing. A combination ofautomated content tagging 108 with e-commerce and e-billing mayfacilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with rights management,such as digital rights management, providing administration rights in adigital environment, allowing the rights holders to be compensated forthe use of their intellectual property, adapting to specificimplementation of digital rights management with the carrier, and thelike. A mobile media platform may facilitate an association of automatedcontent tagging 108 with rights management. A combination of automatedcontent tagging 108 with rights management may facilitate contentdiscovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104,mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitatedby the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with reporting, such aswith a transaction log, an event log, reports used to compute royalties,reports used for recommendations, generating and access reports from aweb interface, and the like. A mobile media platform may facilitate anassociation of automated content tagging 108 with reporting. Acombination of automated content tagging 108 with reporting mayfacilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with administration,including an administration user interface, managing users, managingaccounts, managing preferences, client side management, storefront, userprofiles, user registry, carrier profiles, user interface,administrative interface for content management, and the like. A mobilemedia platform may facilitate an association of automated contenttagging 108 with administration. A combination of automated contenttagging 108 with administration may facilitate content discovery,ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation,settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitated by themobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with advertising,marketing, advertisement management, and ad fulfillment engine, such ascontent that may be advertisements/marketing materials, advertisementsinserted into other content, advertisements associated with one or morerelated or companion advertisements, an advertisement associated withone or more prohibited advertisements, advertisements that areautomatically triggered, advertisements ingested similar to othercontent, advertising management, targeted advertising, ad fulfillment ofobjectives via an ad fulfillment engine, and the like. FIG. 13 depictsone embodiment of a block diagram showing the tagging of advertisement,marketing, advertisement management, and ad fulfillment engine inassociation with the mobile media platform 100, where the advertisementfacility 164 is an integral part of the content management of the mobilemedia platform 100, and relates to the end user mobile communicationfacilities 802 through the distribution facility 182, and to sponsors1302 external to the mobile media platform 100. A mobile media platformmay facilitate an association of automated content tagging 108 withadvertisement, marketing, advertisement management, and ad fulfillmentengine. A combination of automated content tagging 108 withadvertisement, marketing, advertisement management, and ad fulfillmentengine may facilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104,hosting, delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance ofmobile content facilitated by the mobile media platform.

For example, and in embodiments, a sponsor 1302 of sports apparel maywant to associate the recent popular downloads associated with lastweekend's NFL football games. The sponsor 1302 may search for tags 108associated with football from last weekend, and add their own tag 108that associates their advertisement with the football content. Inaddition, the content management facility 902 may continue to tag 108football content upon ingestion 118 from last weekend to the sponsor's1302 advertisement, based on some prearrangement between the sponsors1302 and the content management facility 902.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with security, such asauthentication, authorization, passwords, purchase verification, accesscontrol, biometric identification on the mobile device, encryption,access security, security directed at protecting the content, transfersof content, and the like. A mobile media platform may facilitate anassociation of automated content tagging 108 with security. Acombination of automated content tagging 108 with security mayfacilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting,delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobilecontent facilitated by the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with billing, such asusage collection, pricing, operator billing, off-portal billing, loyaltyprograms, loyalty programs, integration with operator billing systems,integration with third party payment processors, carrier BSS and/or OSS,use of percentage of billing event methodology, data charge based on theamount of bandwidth consumed by delivery, and the like. A mobile mediaplatform may facilitate an association of automated content tagging 108with billing. A combination of automated content tagging 108 withbilling may facilitate content discovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104,hosting, delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and user acceptance ofmobile content facilitated by the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with integration withother systems, such a carrier systems, content provider systems, systemsof mobile devices, ad servers, Internet-based systems, web-basedsystems, billing systems, content delivery systems, ingestion 118 andtranscoding systems, storage systems, social networking systems, hostingsystems, ingestion 118 systems, security systems, search engines, mobilesearch engines and the like. Methods of integration may include hardcoding, loose coupling, over a network, using application programminginterfaces, using interfaces and the like. A mobile media platform mayfacilitate an association of automated content tagging 108 withintegration with other systems. A combination of automated contenttagging 108 with integration with other systems may facilitate contentdiscovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104,mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitatedby the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with architecture of theplatform, such as an application layer, a business module layer, acomponent layer, a system layer, a thin client or rich client layer, adevice registry, and the like. A mobile media platform may facilitate anassociation of automated content tagging 108 with architecture of theplatform. A combination of automated content tagging 108 witharchitecture of the platform may facilitate content discovery, ingestion118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation, settlement, anduser acceptance of mobile content facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with purchasing,shopping, and store front applications, such as facility to marketcontent to consumers via a number of channels, including interactiveWAP, web, and mobile rich client applications, as well as SMS shortcode, mobile bar code campaigns, enabling customers to discover content,provide a means for content providers to highlight and display thevaluable content the user via product placement in the user interface,most popular feature rotations, grouping of associated content intothemes, purchasing platform, home shopping network, and the like. Amobile media platform may facilitate an association of automated contenttagging 108 with purchasing, shopping, and store front applications. Acombination of automated content tagging 108 with purchasing, shopping,and store front applications may facilitate content discovery, ingestion118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation, settlement, anduser acceptance of mobile content facilitated by the mobile mediaplatform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with distribution andchannel applications, such as portals, content portals, distributionchannels, digital distribution, retail channels, wholesale channels, andthe like. A mobile media platform may facilitate an association ofautomated content tagging 108 with distribution and channelapplications. A combination of automated content tagging 108 withdistribution and channel applications may facilitate content discovery,ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation,settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitated by themobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with games, such asincluding, enabling games, facilitating games; creation of gamingportals, games over a network, single player games, multiplayer games,virtual world environments, the ability to have tournaments and sharescores, and the like A mobile media platform may facilitate anassociation of automated content tagging 108 with games. A combinationof automated content tagging 108 with games may facilitate contentdiscovery, ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104,mediation, settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitatedby the mobile media platform.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with users of theplatform, such as end users, consumers, advertisers, marketers, contentproviders, content owners, networks, broadcasters, media companies,mobile carriers, record companies, movie studios, regulators, mobiledevice designers, mobile device manufacturers, mobile device offerors,mobile service consolidators, affiliates, and the like. A mobile mediaplatform may facilitate an association of automated content tagging 108with users of the platform. A combination of automated content tagging108 with users of the platform may facilitate content discovery,ingestion 118, encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation,settlement, and user acceptance of mobile content facilitated by themobile media platform. Tags may also be used during discovery torestrict content, by location, based on user preferences such asparental control.

Automated content tagging 108 may be associated with business models onthe platform, such as shared risk models, shared reward models, shortcode and bar code campaigns, white label/private label, payment andpricing models, distribution, ad-supported models, revenue sharemanagement, and the like. A mobile media platform may facilitate anassociation of automated content tagging 108 with business models on theplatform. A combination of automated content tagging 108 with businessmodels on the platform may facilitate content discovery, ingestion 118,encoding 104, hosting, delivery 104, mediation, settlement, and useracceptance of mobile content facilitated by the mobile media platform.

Referring to FIG. 14, in an embodiment, a pause and resume 114functionality may be associated with Web content 130, such as content130 originating on the World Wide Web or the Internet. Any of the types,sources and examples of content 128 discussed herein may be web content130. For example and without limitation, a user viewing streamingamateur video on their mobile device 1414 may pause playback with apause functionality in order to begin live streaming of a televisionshow. When the television show concludes or at any point during itsprogress, the user may choose to resume playback of the streaming videousing a resume functionality. In another example, a user using a mobiledevice 1414 may set a preference that all content 128 should beautomatically paused when a call comes into the mobile device 1414. Forexample and without limitation, if a user is playing an online game,when a call is received, the online game may automatically pause.Content 128 may be automatically resumed if the user ignores the phonecall, such as by depressing an ignore key, or may resume upon userrequest. In another example, a user may pause video playback from a WAPsite by closing the device clamshell or automatically detecting anincoming phone call or other intervention.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with hosting. For example, hosting mayinvolve making paused content 128 available or receiving paused content128 over a network. In an embodiment, hosting may involve making pausedcontent 128 available to or receiving paused content 128 from a mobiledevice 1414. In another example, content that may be paused indefinitelymay be hosted by a mobile media platform 100 as opposed to the contentsource.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with delivery of content and pausedcontent to a mobile device 1414, as described herein. In an embodiment,the pause and resume 114 functionality may be delivery mechanismagnostic. That is, controlling content via a pause and resume 114functionality may be similar if content is delivered via download,streaming, or any of the delivery mechanisms described herein. In anembodiment, the pause and resume 114 functionality may enable combiningthe delivery of content 128 from different sources or via differentmeans. For example, a user watching a mobile broadcast of a sportingevent may be provided a link to view a pre-recorded video clip thatcovers the highlights of the game to that point. Clicking the link mayautomatically pause the broadcast and result in the applicationswitching video delivery sources from the mobile broadcast network tothe cellular network and causing the highlighted video clip to bestreamed on-demand to the user via the cellular network. After viewingthe clip, the users could be provided other links to allow them tochoose from a list of other content 128 that is available on either thebroadcast or cellular networks, or they may choose to resume theprevious broadcast.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with optimization of various processes,capabilities, and features of the mobile media platform 100, such asingestion, encoding, hosting, delivery, and the like. For example,optimization may be enacted for generating ideal pause points foradvertising insertions, such as by aggregating most frequently pausedpoints for all users.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with packaging content 128 includingrepackaging ingested content 128.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with storage and at least one storagefacility. For example, the pause and resume 114 functionality may beused to control content that is in storage.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with a user interface 140 for enablinginteractivity, viewing thumbnails, facilitating game day tracking,enabling rich new reader features, managing end user presentation, andthe like. For example, the user interface 140 may be used to accesscontrols associated with the pause and resume 114 functionality.Referring now to FIG. 49, a user interface of a mobile device may beuseful for presenting pause and resume controls. For example, device4914 may have a set of keys that become active when a user requestsplayback such as on a touchscreen of the device 1414 or where anassigned key becomes activated for a particular function. In theexample, playback controls include at least one of play 4904, stop 4908,rewind 4902, fast forward 4910, and the like. In an embodiment, thepause functionality, such as shown in 4912 of device 4918, may not beactive until play has been initiated or may always be present. In anembodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality may be associated witha reporting user interface, a content management user interface, anadministration user interface, an ingestion management user interface,and the like.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with notification and delivery ofmessages to mobile device 1414 users. For example, if an urgentnotification or message is sent to the device, any content being playedon the device may automatically pause to view the notification ormessage. The user may choose to resume playback after having viewed thenotification or message. In an embodiment, a user may manually pausecontent to check for or view notifications and messages.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with content discovery 144. For exampleand without limitation, during playback of a foreign movie, a user maywish to find related content or may need to access a source to help ininterpreting the movie. The user may pause the movie and access contentdiscovery 144 tools. Once the user is ready to resume the movie, theymay use a resume functionality. In another example, a user may pausecurrent playback when a content discovery 144 feed notifies the user ofnew content. Once the user consults the feed, they may choose to resumethe playback or take another action, such as select new content from thefeed.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with a personalized user experience. Thepause and resume 114 functionality may enable a mobile device 1414 tonavigate a personal entertainment portal to a personal entertainmentserver or vice-versa.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with social networking or communityaspects. For example, a user may pause content to refer content, ratecontent, gift content, receive friends' ratings, visit a forumassociated with the content, to receive a message from a friend, sharethe content with a peer, and the like.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with e-commerce such as billing, pricing,event tracking, bundling, tiered services, content 128 purchase (e.g.individual pieces, collections, subscriptions), discounts, free servicesand content 128, multimedia advertising delivery and monetization. Forexample, content may be automatically paused in order to engage a userin e-commerce, such as to pay for the remaining duration of content.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with digital rights management. Forexample, certain functionalities may be disabled due to digital rightsmanagement, such as pause, resume, or both.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with reporting facilities, such astransaction logs, event logs, digital rights and virtual property useand consumption royalties and recommendation reporting. For example, anevent log may record content played, the number of times it was played,the number of pauses, the actual time the content was accessed based onplayback time and paused time, and the like. Reports may be generatedand/or accessed through a web interface.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with mobile media platform 100 relatedadministration. For example, an administration user interface may beused to set preferences for a pause and resume 114 functionality. In acertain embodiment, the pause and resume 114 functionality may beassociated with a user interface 140 for ingestion management, includingadministrative aspects of ingestion management. For example, the userinterface 140 may allow a user to pause ingestion

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with advertising content. Content 128 maybe advertisements, marketing materials and the like. The content 128 maybe an interstitial advertisement, banner ad, in stream ad, ad placed inthe content 128 itself, ad framing the content 128, an ad appearingbefore or after the content 128 and the like. A pause and resume 114functionality may facilitate ad insertion at any point during thecontent without having to make the advertisement part of the contentitself.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with a security facility and securityfunctionality, which may include authentication, authorization,passwords, purchase verification, access control, biometricidentification, encryption and the like. For example, to resume playbackof content, a user may be required provide authorization.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with a variety of billing systems. Forexample, billing may be based on the amount of bandwidth consumed by thedelivery of a piece or collection of content 128, which may be less than100% if content was paused and never resumed.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated or integrated with other systems byvarious methods of integration. Other systems may include carriersystems, content provider 1424 systems, systems of mobile devices 1414,ad servers, Internet-based systems, web-based systems, billing systems,content 128 delivery systems, encoding and transcoding systems, storagesystems, social networking systems, hosting systems, ingestion systems,security systems, search engines, mobile search engines and the like.Methods of integration may include hard coding, loose coupling, over anetwork, using application programming interfaces, using interfaces andthe like.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality may be associatedwith general architecture aspects of the mobile media platform 100 whichare disclosed through this specification and may include, withoutlimitation, any of the following: application layer (J2ME, BREW, WAP,HTML, etc), a business module including a content 128 facility layer forfulfillment and hosting, a commerce facility layer for merchandising andbilling, a culture facility layer for communities and personalization, acomponent layer with modules and/or facilities that include searchinterface, digital rights management, loyalty programs, partnermanagement, a registry of the parties involved in the creation anddelivery of content 128, and the revenue sharing relationship betweenthe parties. For example, the pause and resume functionality may bedeployed by any layer or element of the general architecture to enablepause and resume of content in association with any element of thegeneral architecture.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality may be associatedwith a store front application of the mobile media platform 100 whichmay include a facility to market content 128 to consumers via a numberof channels, including interactive WAP, web, and mobile rich clientapplications, as well as SMS short code, and mobile bar code campaigns.For example, a user may pause content playback to access the store frontapplication to discover content 128.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with its role as a portal, content 128portal or the like.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with games, such as mobile games. Forexample, a user playing a game on a mobile device 1414 may be able topause and the resume game play.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with a wide variety of users who mayinteract with, benefit from, or otherwise have a relationship to themobile media platform 100 or to the pause and resume 114 functionalityaspect of the mobile media platform 100. Representative users mayinclude end users; consumers, advertisers, marketers, content provider1424 s, content 128 owners, networks, broadcasters, media companies,mobile carriers, record companies, movie studios, regulators, mobiledevice 1414 designers, mobile device 1414 manufacturers, mobile device1414 offerors, mobile service consolidators and affiliates, and thelike. In an embodiment, any user may have access to, control, setpreferences for, deactivate, or activate pause and resume functionalityassociated with any content.

In an embodiment, a pause and resume 114 functionality of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with various business models.

Continuing to refer to FIGS. 16 and 17, in an embodiment, mediation andsettlement 112 may be associated with various types of content 128 thatmay be sourced from a variety of sources. Types of content 128 mayinclude audio, video, text, images, photos, applications, games, data,ring tones, wall paper, fonts, hyperlinks, tables, tabular formattedtext, user generated content 128, media, content 128 primitives,composite content 128, marketing type content 128, and the like, and newcontent 128 types that may continue to be invented and adapted over timethat the mobile media platform 100 may extend to cover. The media datarecord 1692 may normalize data associated with any content type.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withweb content 128, such as content 128 originating on the World Wide Webor the Internet. The media data record 1692 may normalize dataassociated with any web content.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated with acontent ingestion 118 functionality and capability that may beassociated with a consumption profile, content 128 management, and thelike. Mediation and settlement 112 may cull data from content ingestion118 to include in a media data record 1692.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated with ahosting 132 capability of a mobile media platform 100. For example,hosting may involve making content 128 available or receiving content128. The act of making content 128 available may automatically initiatea media data record 1692 capture and tracking of the content tofacilitate eventual mediation and settlement 112.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withcontent delivery 120 to mobile devices 1614. Content 128 that isdelivered may be personalized using similar genres, teams, communitiesof interest, and other content 128 based mechanisms, and suchpersonalization may be tracked as potential revenue allocation items.Monitoring the method of content delivery 120 may also be associatedwith mediation and settlement 112 as certain methods of delivery maygenerate more revenue than others. The media data record 1692 maycapture information such as whether content delivery 120 includesdelivery of content 128 from different sources or via different means.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withoptimization 134 associated with various processes, capabilities, andfeatures of the mobile media platform 100. Optimization 134 may beenacted for ingestion 118, encoding, transcoding, hosting, delivery, andthe like. Optimization 134 may facilitate the capture of information forthe media data record 1692. For example, as an optimization 134 is madeto the delivery of content, the media data record 1692 may be triggeredto track and record the media data event.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withpackaging content 128 including repackaging ingested content 128. Themedia data record 1692 may keep track of the parameters of the packagedor repackaged content.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withstorage 122 and at least one storage facility. In an embodiment, storage122 may be a media data event that may be tracked on the media datarecord 1692.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated with auser interface 140 for enabling interactivity, viewing thumbnails,facilitating game day tracking, enabling rich new reader features,managing end user presentation, and the like. The user interface 140 mayalso be used to access and update a media data record 1692 andparticipate in mediation and settlement 112. For example and withoutlimitation, when a user interface 140 may be used to activate a UIwidget, tracking may commence in the media data record 1692. In anembodiment, the user interface 140 may be used to administer mediationand settlement 1692 and the parameters associated with generating themedia data record 1692.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withnotification and delivery of messages 142 to mobile device 1614 users.The mobile media platform 100 may support user directed management ofnotifications 142 so that the user may determine how and whennotifications, alerts, and messages 142 are delivered. A notification,alert, or message 142 may be related to mediation and settlement 112,such as to inform a user that certain activities may be tracked for thepurposes of content distribution revenue allocation.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withcontent discovery 144. For example, content discovery 144 may be enabledby a paid search or third party content database. Such paid search ordatabase mining activity may be captured by a media data record 1692 formediation and settlement 112.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with information relating to the location148 of a mobile device 1614 or user and/or intelligence derived in wholeor in part from such location information 148. For example, a media datarecord 1692 may include a record of content 1620 a user may access basedon a location.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 of a mobile mediaplatform 100 may be associated with a personalized user experience 152.In embodiments the platform may leverage recommendations from thecommunities to which the user belongs and use the information to presentrelevant content 128. A media data record 1692 may track suchrecommendations and content 128 views associated with such requests.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withsocial networking 150 or community aspects. Social networking 150aspects may include user content 128 referral, user content 128 rating,forums, gifting, buddy list management, peer-to-peer management,communities of interest, profile pages, dMail, points, message boards,newsletters, shopping, dynamic home page construction, advertising,notifications, and the like. For example, a media data record 1692 maytrack content 128 distributed amongst a group of peers or posted on asocial networking homepage for mediation and settlement 112.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withcarrier 1682 management. Mediation and settlement 112 may be associatedwith ecommerce 154 such as billing, pricing, event tracking, bundling,tiered services, content 128 purchase (e.g. individual pieces,collections, subscriptions), discounts, free services and content 128,multimedia advertising delivery and monetization. In an embodiment, asubscription may be to certain content 128 and certain additionalcontent 128 is identified as premium content 128 outside thesubscription plan and the user has to pay extra to access this content128. A media data record 1692 may track such access to content 128 andassociate it with a subscription or being outside of a subscriptionplan.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withdigital rights management 158. A media data record 1692 may allow rightsholders to track and receive compensation for use of their content 128and other intellectual property. The mobile media platform 100 may adaptthe implementation of digital rights management 158 to differentcarriers 1682.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may also providereporting 124 facilities, such as transaction logs, event logs, digitalrights and virtual property use and consumption royalties andrecommendation reporting 124. Reports may be generated and/or accessedthrough a web interface based on information contained in a media datarecord 1692.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withmobile media platform 100 related administration 162. An administrationuser interface 162 may be accessed to set preferences for capture ofdata in a media data record 1692, to view data captured in a media datarecord 1692, to reconcile data captured in a media data record 1692, andthe like.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withadvertisements 164, marketing materials and the like. Advertisingcontent may be tracked in a media data record 1692 to determine anappropriate share of revenue due or payment required from an advertiser.In an embodiment, the media data record 1692 may record clickthroughs,or whether a user interacted with an advertisement or eventuallypurchased an item or service advertised. In an embodiment, the mediadata record 1692 may be associated with an ad fulfillment engine toenable generation of reports regarding the delivery and consumption ofadvertisements 164 and other content 128. The ad fulfillment engine mayinterface with, assist or be assisted by the settlement and mediationprocesses of the mobile media platform 100.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated with asecurity facility 168 and security functionality, which may includeauthentication, authorization, passwords, purchase verification, accesscontrol, biometric identification, encryption and the like. Security 168may be directed at securing access to the platform and may also bedirected at protecting the content 128 and information of the platform,such as during data transfers. Mediation and settlement 112 may accountfor various security measures, for example, where the platform 100operator charges a larger fee for more rigorous security measures. Amedia data record 1692 may contain data on a security aspect of accessedcontent 128.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated with avariety of billing systems 170. Usage collection may provide a mechanismto collect relevant information related to the consumption of content128 and store it in a central location for billing 170 and reportingpurposes. A media data record 1692 may contain such usage information tofacilitate billing 170 and reporting.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be integrated withother systems by various methods of integration 172. Other systems mayinclude carrier 1682 systems, content provider systems, systems ofmobile devices 1614, ad servers, Internet-based systems, web-basedsystems, billing systems, content delivery 120 systems, encoding andtranscoding systems, storage 122 systems, social networking systems,hosting systems, ingestion systems, security systems, search engines,mobile search engines and the like. Methods of integration 172 mayinclude hard coding, loose coupling, over a network, using applicationprogramming interfaces, using interfaces and the like.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withgeneral architecture 174 aspects of the mobile media platform 100 whichare disclosed through this specification and may include, withoutlimitation, any of the following: application layer (J2ME, BREW, WAP,HTML, etc), a business module including a content 128 facility layer forfulfillment and hosting, a commerce facility layer for merchandising andbilling, a culture facility layer for communities and personalization, acomponent layer with modules and/or facilities that include searchinterface, digital rights management, loyalty programs, partnermanagement, a registry of the parties involved in the creation anddelivery of content 128, and the revenue sharing relationship betweenthe parties. A media data record 1692 may be useful for determiningrevenue shares and revenue reconciliation between the various entities,peer-to-peer management, buddy list management, browser interface,streaming service, off-portal billing, customer service representatives,self-care management, content 128 filter management, gifting, encoding,transcoding, download service, operator billing, advertisement manager,notification management, forum/blog/rant, content ingestion 118, devicemanagement, pricing, management console, profile management, usercontent 128 rating, content 128 management, delivery management, usagecollection, storefront, user registry, user content 128 referral, andthe like.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated with astore front application 178 which may include a facility to marketcontent 128 to consumers via a number of channels, including interactiveWAP, web, and mobile rich client applications, as well as SMS shortcode, and mobile bar code campaigns. The store front application 178 mayenable consumers to discover content 128, provide a means for contentproviders to highlight and display the valuable content 128 to the uservia product placement in the user interface through ‘most popular’feature rotation and content 128 grouping based on themes and providinginteractive cues (e.g. “more like this”). Usage of the store frontapplication may be tracked in a media data record 1692.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withthe mobile media platform's 100 role as a portal 182, content portal orthe like. The platform may include or function as a distributionchannel, such as a content 128 distribution channel, digitaldistribution or the like. Mediation and settlement 112 may facilitatereconciling revenue share and costs associated with this role.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withgames 180, such as mobile games. A media data record 1692 may trackaccess to games 180 and gaming activities.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated with awide variety of users 184 who may interact with, benefit from, orotherwise have a relationship to the mobile media platform 100 or toaspects of the mobile media platform 100. Representative users mayinclude end users; consumers, advertisers 1684, marketers, contentproviders, content owners, networks, broadcasters, media companies,mobile carriers 1682, record companies, movie studios, regulators,mobile device designers, mobile device manufacturers, mobile deviceofferors, mobile service consolidators and affiliates, and the like.

In an embodiment, mediation and settlement 112 may be associated withvarious business models 160. Business models 160 may include models foroperating the mobile media platform 100, providing services associatedwith the platform, establishing business relationships with partners,capitalizing on market opportunities, protecting and promoting platformrelated intellectual property, internationalization, and the like.Mediation and settlement 112 may enable various business models 160 byestablishing revenue sharing management and cost sharing management.

Content types, sources and parameters may be combined with socialnetworking that may include content referral, rating, gifting, forums,profiles, and lists and may also be associated with a mobile mediaplatform. This combination may be further combined with a consumptionprofile which may include a device profile, a user profile, a networkprofile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination of contenttypes with social networking as herein described may further be combinedwith one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching,advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, contentpause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Web content may be combined with optimization of ingestion, encoding,transcoding, hosting, and/or delivery that may be associated with amobile media platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofweb content with optimization as herein described may further becombined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamlessswitching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated contenttagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Web content may be combined with location information and intelligencethat may be associated with a mobile media platform. This combinationmay be further combined with a consumption profile which may include adevice profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile,and the like. The combination of Web content with location informationand intelligence as herein described may further be combined with one ormore of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advancedencoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, content pauseand resume, and mediation and settlement.

Ingestion may be combined with optimization of ingestion, encoding,transcoding, hosting, and/or delivery that may be associated with amobile media platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofingestion with optimization as herein described may further be combinedwith one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching,advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, contentpause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Ingestion may be combined with an architecture of a mobile mediaplatform. This combination may be further combined with a consumptionprofile which may include a device profile, a user profile, a networkprofile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination of ingestionwith a mobile media architecture as herein described may further becombined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamlessswitching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated contenttagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Ingestion may be combined with business models associated with a mobilemedia platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofingestion with business models associated with a mobile media platformas herein described may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

Content delivery may be combined with one or more of advertising,marketing, advertisement management, and an ad fulfillment engine, anyof which may be associated with a mobile media platform. Thiscombination may be further combined with a consumption profile which mayinclude a device profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encodingprofile, and the like. The combination of content delivery with one ormore of advertising, marketing, advertisement management, and an adfulfillment engine as herein described may further be combined with oneor more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advancedencoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, content pauseand resume, and mediation and settlement.

Optimization of ingestion, encoding, transcoding, hosting and deliverymay be combined with social networking that may include contentreferral, rating, gifting, forums, profiles, and lists, and may also beassociated with a mobile media platform. This combination may be furthercombined with a consumption profile which may include a device profile,a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like.The combination of optimization of ingestion, encoding, transcoding,hosting and delivery with social networking, as herein described mayfurther be combined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcastseamless switching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automatedcontent tagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Optimization of ingestion, encoding, transcoding, hosting and deliverymay be combined with one or more of advertising, marketing,advertisement management, and ad fulfillment engine, any of which may beassociated with a mobile media platform. This combination may be furthercombined with a consumption profile which may include a device profile,a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like.The combination of optimization of ingestion, encoding, transcoding,hosting and delivery with one or more of advertising; marketing,advertisement management, and ad fulfillment engine, as herein describedmay further be combined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcastseamless switching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automatedcontent tagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Optimization of one or more of ingestion, encoding, transcoding, hostingand delivery may be combined with business models on the platform thatmay be associated with a mobile media platform. This combination may befurther combined with a consumption profile which may include a deviceprofile, a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and thelike. The combination of optimization of ingestion, encoding,transcoding, hosting and delivery with business models on the platform,as herein described may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

User interface may be combined with one or more of notifications,messages and alerts that may be associated with a mobile media platform.This combination may be further combined with a consumption profilewhich may include a device profile, a user profile, a network profile,an encoding profile, and the like. The combination of user interfacewith one or more of notifications, messages, and alerts as hereindescribed may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

User interface may be combined with content discovery that may beassociated with a mobile media platform. This combination may be furthercombined with a consumption profile which may include a device profile,a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like.The combination of user interface with content discovery, as hereindescribed may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

User interface may be combined with location information andintelligence that may be associated with a mobile media platform. Thiscombination may be further combined with a consumption profile which mayinclude a device profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encodingprofile, and the like. The combination of user interface with locationinformation and intelligence, as herein described may further becombined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamlessswitching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated contenttagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

User interface may be combined with personalization of user experience,which may include personal entertainment server and interactiveprogramming guide, and may be associated with a mobile media platform.This combination may be further combined with a consumption profilewhich may include a device profile, a user profile, a network profile,an encoding profile, and the like. The combination of user interfacewith personalization of user experience, which may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide, as hereindescribed may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

User interface may be combined with one or more of advertising,marketing, advertisement management; and ad fulfillment engine, any ofwhich may be associated with a mobile media platform. This combinationmay be further combined with a consumption profile which may include adevice profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile,and the like. The combination of user interface with one or more ofadvertising, marketing, advertisement management, and ad fulfillmentengine, as herein described may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

User interface may be combined with integration with other systems thatmay include carrier systems and search engines, and may be associatedwith a mobile media platform. This combination may be further combinedwith a consumption profile which may include a device profile, a userprofile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. Thecombination of user interface with integration with other systems thatmay include carrier systems and search engines, as herein described mayfurther be combined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcastseamless switching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automatedcontent tagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

One or more of notifications, messages, and alerts may be combined withpersonalization of user experience which may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide and may beassociated with a mobile media platform. This combination may be furthercombined with a consumption profile which may include a device profile,a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like.The combination of one or more of notifications, messages, and alertswith personalization of user experience, as herein described may furtherbe combined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamlessswitching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated contenttagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Content discovery may be combined with rights management that may beassociated with a mobile media platform. This combination may be furthercombined with a consumption profile which may include a device profile,a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like.The combination of content discovery with rights management, as hereindescribed may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

One or both of location information and location intelligence may becombined with personalization of user experience which may includepersonal entertainment server and interactive programming guide, and maybe associated with a mobile media platform. This combination may befurther combined with a consumption profile which may include a deviceprofile, a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and thelike. The combination of one or both of location information andlocation intelligence with personalization of user experience, as hereindescribed may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

One or both of location information and location intelligence may becombined with social networking that may include content referral,rating, gifting, forums, profiles, and lists and may be associated witha mobile media platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofone or both of location information and location intelligence withsocial networking, as herein described may further be combined with oneor more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advancedencoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, content pauseand resume, and mediation and settlement.

One or both of location information and location intelligence may becombined with rights management that may be associated with a mobilemedia platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofone or both of location information and location intelligence withrights management, as herein described may further be combined with oneor more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advancedencoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, content pauseand resume, and mediation and settlement.

One or both of location information and intelligence may be combinedwith one or more of advertising, marketing, advertisement management,and ad fulfillment engine that may be associated with a mobile mediaplatform. This combination may be further combined with a consumptionprofile which may include a device profile, a user profile, a networkprofile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination of one orboth of location information and location intelligence with one or moreof advertising, marketing, advertisement management and ad fulfillmentengine, as herein described, may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

Personalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide may be combinedwith one or more of advertising, marketing, advertisement management, adfulfillment engine and any of which may be associated with a mobilemedia platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofpersonalization of user experience with one or more of advertising,marketing, advertisement management, ad fulfillment engine as hereindescribed, may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

Personalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide may be combinedwith integration with other systems that includes carrier systems andsearch engines and may be associated with a mobile media platform. Thiscombination may be further combined with a consumption profile which mayinclude a device profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encodingprofile, and the like. The combination of personalization of userexperience with integration with other systems that may include carriersystem and search engines as herein described, may further be combinedwith one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching,advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, contentpause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Personalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide may be combinedwith architecture of the platform that may be associated with a mobilemedia platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofpersonalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide with architectureof the platform as herein described may further be combined with one ormore of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advancedencoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, content pauseand resume, and mediation and settlement.

Personalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide may be combinedwith distribution or channel applications that may be associated with amobile media platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofpersonalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide with distributionor channel applications as herein described, may further be combinedwith one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching,advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, contentpause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Personalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide may be combinedwith users of the platform that may be associated with a mobile mediaplatform. This combination may be further combined with a consumptionprofile which may include a device profile, a user profile, a networkprofile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofpersonalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide with users of theplatform as herein described may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

Personalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide may be combinedwith business models on the platform that may be associated with amobile media platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofpersonalization of user experience that may include personalentertainment server and interactive programming guide with businessmodels on the platform as herein described, may further be combined withone or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advancedencoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, content pauseand resume, and mediation and settlement.

Social networking that may include content referral, rating, gifting,forums, profiles, and lists may be combined with one or more ofadvertising, marketing, advertisement management, and ad fulfillmentengine that may be associated with a mobile media platform. Thiscombination may be further combined with a consumption profile which mayinclude a device profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encodingprofile, and the like. The combination of social networking with one ormore of advertising; marketing; advertisement management; ad fulfillmentengines herein described may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

E-commerce or e-billing may be combined with rights management that maybe associated with a mobile media platform. This combination may befurther combined with a consumption profile which may include a deviceprofile, a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and thelike. The combination of E-commerce or e-billing with rights managementas herein described may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

Reporting may be combined with one or more of advertising, marketing,advertisement management, and ad fulfillment engine that may beassociated with a mobile media platform. This combination may be furthercombined with a consumption profile which may include a device profile,a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like.The combination of reporting with one or more of advertising, marketing,advertisement management, and ad fulfillment engine, as herein describedmay further be combined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcastseamless switching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automatedcontent tagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Administration that may include administration UI, may be combined withintegration with other system that may include carrier systems andsearch engines that may be associated with a mobile media platform. Thiscombination may be further combined with a consumption profile which mayinclude a device profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encodingprofile, and the like. The combination of administration, that mayinclude administration UI, with integration with other system as hereindescribed, may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

One or more of advertising, marketing, advertisement management and adfulfillment engine, may be combined with integration with other systemthat may include carrier systems and search engines and may beassociated with a mobile media platform. This combination may be furthercombined with a consumption profile which may include a device profile,a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like.The combination of one or more of advertising, marketing, advertisementmanagement, and ad fulfillment engine with integration with othersystem, as herein described may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

One or more of advertising, marketing, advertisement management, and adfulfillment engine may be combined with architecture of the platformthat may be associated with a mobile media platform. This combinationmay be further combined with a consumption profile which may include adevice profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile,and the like. The combination of one or more of advertising, marketing,advertisement management, and ad fulfillment engine with architecture ofthe platform, as herein described may further be combined with one ormore of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advancedencoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, content pauseand resume, and mediation and settlement.

One or more of advertising, marketing, advertisement management, and adfulfillment engine may be combined with business models on the platformthat may be associated with a mobile media platform. This combinationmay be further combined with a consumption profile which may include adevice profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile,and the like. The combination of one or more of advertising, marketing,advertisement management, ad fulfillment engine with business models onthe platform as herein described may further be combined with one ormore of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advancedencoding and/or transcoding, automated content tagging, content pauseand resume, and mediation and settlement.

Security may be combined with one or more of purchasing, shopping andstore front applications that may be associated with a mobile mediaplatform. This combination may be further combined with a consumptionprofile which may include a device profile, a user profile, a networkprofile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination of securitywith one or more of purchasing, shopping and store front applications,as herein described may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

Billing may be combined with integration with other system that mayinclude carrier systems and search engines and may be associated with amobile media platform. This combination may be further combined with aconsumption profile which may include a device profile, a user profile,a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. The combination ofbilling with integration with other system, as herein described mayfurther be combined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcastseamless switching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automatedcontent tagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

Architecture of the platform may be combined with one or more ofpurchasing, shopping and store front applications that may be associatedwith a mobile media platform. This combination may be further combinedwith a consumption profile which may include a device profile, a userprofile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like. Thecombination of architecture of the platform with one or more ofpurchasing, shopping and store front applications, as herein describedmay further be combined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcastseamless switching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automatedcontent tagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

One or more of purchasing, shopping and store front applications may becombined with distribution or channel applications that may beassociated with a mobile media platform. This combination may be furthercombined with a consumption profile which may include a device profile,a user profile, a network profile, an encoding profile, and the like.The combination of one or more of purchasing, shopping and store frontapplications with distribution or channel applications, as hereindescribed may further be combined with one or more ofunicast/multicast/broadcast seamless switching, advanced encoding and/ortranscoding, automated content tagging, content pause and resume, andmediation and settlement.

Users of the platform may be combined with business models on theplatform that may be associated with a mobile media platform. Thiscombination may be further combined with a consumption profile which mayinclude a device profile, a user profile, a network profile, an encodingprofile, and the like. The combination of users of the platform withbusiness models on the platform as herein described, may further becombined with one or more of unicast/multicast/broadcast seamlessswitching, advanced encoding and/or transcoding, automated contenttagging, content pause and resume, and mediation and settlement.

FIG. 50 provides an embodiment of the architecture for the mediaplatform 100. A media platform 100 may include a multimedia system thatprovides for services associated with the collection, ingestion,encoding, distribution, consumption, mediation and settlement, and usagereporting of video and advertising content in association with usersoperating on a mobile communication facility 5002. As shown, the mediaplatform 100 may follow a client-server architecture, wherethird-parties provide the interface between the mobile communicationfacility 5002, such as user mobile handsets 5002, and the media platform100.

Media, such as a video, may first be supplied to the media platform 100through a feed and content drop off 5004. Ingestion of the content intothe media platform may include a collection agent 5008 that parses RSSfeed and content to collect physical files including content andadvertisements. As a result, the collection agent 5008 may be able toprovide updates for advertisements and content information to theconsumption data store 5012. The reception of new content may theninitiate video encoding to start. The video encoder 5010, aftercompleting encoding, may upload encoded advertisements and video to thestreaming server 5020.

In embodiments, user consumption of the content may include a webapplication for looking up content and advertisements by identificationnumber, generating playlists and configuration files for streaming, andinitiating streaming execution. In addition, reports may be generated inassociation with the content consumption. Other components within themedia platform 100 may include a content/advertisement and consumptiondata storage 5012, a file system 5014, an Sftp drop-off server 5018,application server 5022, and the like. In addition, third partycomponents may include an ad server database 5028, a user profiledatabase 204, a WAP deck 5032 for interfacing with user handsets 5002,and the like. In embodiments, the user interface may be directed fromthe media platform, or made through third party environments.

In embodiments, ingestion may use a collection agent 5008 and involvethe ingesting of advertisements and video. The preconditions for the useof the collection agent 5008 may include the successful placement ofcontent in the drop off folder 5004, where the collection agent 5008 maythen pick up the feed, update content and advertisement data, store formapping, parse the feed, pass video to encoder 5010, and the like. Theencoder 5010 may then be initiated for the start of encoding, where rawvideos may use specified encoding profiles. When encoding is complete,the encoder 5010 may place new video in a folder for publishing on thestreaming server 5020. At this point in the process, the content andadvertisements may be available for viewing and streaming to users'handsets 5002.

In embodiments, a user may request a playlist for content consumptionthrough a third party, where an action code, subscriber ID, contentlist, and the like, may be submitted via HTTP. The process may include aplurality of steps, such as checking the content database to look up acontent file name by ID, checking the streaming folder to determine ifrequested contents are available, generating playlist files from arequest, determining which port to use for streaming, generatingconfiguration, executing a command to create streaming, insertion ofconsumption records including playlist and subscriber ID, returningsuccess or failure response back the third party, and the like.

The media platform 100 may be multi-capability, componentized, andprovide many essential services for wireless applications, such as forcontent ingestion from users, content consumption by users, and usagereporting. FIG. 51 provides a high level block diagram for the mediaplatform 100, where a content API servlet 5102 may interface withcontent management 5104 and ingestion services 118 providing data accesscomponents 5110 that may further interface with an open video database5012. In turn the file system 5014 may interface with the streamingserver 5020, the encoder 5010, and the collection agent 5008, andinterface back with the data access components 5110. In embodiments, thecollection agent 5008 may represent the demarcation point between themedia platform 100 and the third party environments, where a specificcollection agent 5008 may serve many content categories andadvertisements, such as for news, fun, sport, music, USC, advertisingcontents, and the like.

FIG. 52 provides a high level block diagram for the media platform'singestion services. Here the collection agent 5008 may get a new XMLdata feed and content files from the drop-off location 5004, such asfrom a content provider. The collection agent may then pass the rawvideo files to the encoder 5010 which may be responsible for renderingthe video into various 3GP profiles. In embodiments, the content agent5008 may parse the XML feed and generate the appropriate objects, aswell as provide information processing, such as inserting ads andcontent into data store within the media platform 100 environment,deploy the formatted videos within the media platform 100 environment(and may include the streaming server), and the like.

FIG. 53 provides a content agent sequence diagram. Here, it is shown howthe collection agent 5008 receives the download from the content dropoff location 5004 where it is parsed and may also provide updates to thecontent information in data storage 5012. Then the content may be sentto the video encoder 5010, encoded, and sent off to the publishing agent5008B. The encoded video may then be sent to the streaming server 5020to be made available to users.

FIG. 54 provides a block diagram of the encoding process. The encoder5010 may create multiple formats based on profiles defined in thesystem. Once the videos are encoded, they may be picked by the partneragent and published to production along with metadata descriptors. FIG.54 shows how the collection agent sends the raw media and XML data on toexternal storage 5402, and then on to formatting, such as raw mediaformatting 5404 and, if necessary, to an intermediate AVI file 5408. Thefiles are then video encoded 5010A and advertisement encoded 5010B, andsent back to external storage 5402. The publishing agent 5008B may thentake the encoded files from external storage 5402 to be made availableto the streaming server 5020. The video encoder listens on an input SFTPlocation, which may be implemented using a cron job that invokes thevideo encoder 5010 each minute to check if files that need to be encodedare present. If they are present, the video encoder may encode them.While encoding, it may or may not check for more files. The videoencoder may then publish encoded media to a remote SFTP location, fromwhere the collection/publishing agent may pick them up and move themover to the streaming server 5020.

In embodiments, the encoding process may include a content durationextraction. In this case the encoder 5010 may be required to analyze theduration of the sources content. A new set of instructions may need tobe executed before the encoding process begins. In addition, a new tagmay be added to support the duration extraction. In embodiments, theencoding process may include various encoding profiles, and the encodermay be capable of supporting additional profiles, where new profiles maybe added manually to the configuration file video converter whenrequired. An encoding profile may be a set of instructions that may needto be executed in order to encode a raw media file (source) to anencoded media file (destination). An encoding profile may have a tag,where each profile may contain a name, network type, and encodingconfiguration settings. Tags may contain actual commands that runthrough the operating system command line. Every parameter tag maycontain an ID attribute, which may be a sequence number the command isrun in. Commands may be enclosed, since they may contain characters thathave corrupt XML syntax. In addition, tokens may be used, and replacedwith actual values at runtime.

FIG. 55 provides a video encoding utility lifecycle 600 diagram, wherethe encoder 5010 is started by a job that invokes a shell script. Inembodiments, the job may run periodically, such as once per minute, andproceed through a routine for running the encoder. For instance, and asdepicted in FIG. 55, it may first determine whether the encoder 5010 isrunning, if it is then the encoder may be left to resume encoding. If itis not running, then the encoder may be started, and a check may be madefor new raw media files for encoding. In embodiments, the video encoder5010 may publish encoded media to a remote location, from where thepublishing agent 5008B may pick up and move the encoded media to thestreaming server 5020. In embodiments, third party components may havespecific requirements for the response to submission and publication,and the media platform 100 may integrate with their APIs to indicate asuccess or failure. Other codes may include RSS error, content notfound, content name error, guidance exist error, encoding error,internal submission error, internal publishing error, lost Guidanceerror, database error, file error, unsupported format error, and thelike. In embodiments, third party components may be notified by emailfor submission and publication and the stats code and messages may beincluded in the email.

In embodiments, the media platform may include a servlet 5102. With theservlet 5102 the client may use multiple action codes to requestinformation from the server side. The content consumption servlet 5102may take in action codes while capturing the transaction method, thatis, getting a file or posting a file, and a success or failure responsemay also be sent back to the client. In embodiments, the servlet mayinclude content management. There may be content managers (interfaceswith their corresponding implementation classes) used to manage contentin the database (i.e. store, delete, and modify content) and contentbrowsers (again, interfaces with their corresponding implementationclasses) used to retrieve content stored in the database. Inembodiments, content browsers may mostly be used by the servlet to handdata over to third party components. Client requests may come in URLformat with parameters tagged to the base URL of the Servlet asname-value pairs. Data may be sent by the content servlet to the clientin a format with the URL, where the action IDs used in the requests maybe static values agreed upon between the client and the server, andrepresentative of the application operations.

In embodiments, action types may used and may include playlist requests,content availability checks, and the like. Playlist requests may listthe ID for advertisements or content to be played in the requestedorder, and the subscriber ID and playlist information may be stored indata store for reporting. A content availability check may be anadvertisement or content being checked for being ingested in the system.A content Consumption API may respond by using HTTP response statuscodes with a body message. Standard HTTP response codes may be used withthe addition of media platform response codes. Examples of responsecodes may include, success, content not found, invalid requestparameter, service unavailable, internal server error, consumptionrecord cannot be generated, database connection problem, playlist cannotbe generated, SDP cannot be generated, and the like.

In embodiments, the media platform may include reporting of customer andcontent consumptions for streaming. The report may include a customer ID(which may be from the third party), playlist, date time, duration ofviewing time, and the like. To fulfill the requirements, data may becaptured from steaming log files and consumption records which may havegenerated when the request came from the third party. An example of alog file may be:

192.168.1.151 2007-08-07 18:53:22 192.168.1.22:554/mobile/content/provider/1186512465939.sdp 3 121 1 504 192.168.1.1517.2 -QuickTime/7.2%20(qtver=7.2;os=Windows%20NT%205.1Service%20Pack%202)Windows NT%205.1Service%20Pack%202 - 0 0 0 RTP UDP - H263-1998/90000287528 0 0 374 0 0 1 3 100 192.168.1.22 to-dev-stream-01.quickplay.local1 0 subscriberId=11223&playlistId=112334_11223 - Streaming%20Server  •2007-08-07 18:53:22 — date time  • 3 - Streaming start time  • 121-Streaming end time  • subscriberId=11223&playlistId=112334_11223, extraparameters for subscriber id and playlist id.

In embodiments, the media platform may also contain consumption records.Consumption records may be database records that may be generated duringcontent consumption. A consumption record may include a playlist ID,subscriber id, a list of guidance Ids, and the like.

Referring to FIG. 56, the methods and systems of a mobile media platformas herein described may be deployed across geographies and may beadapted to suite requirements associated with the geographies. Securitycan be established between geographies to further ensure requirementsand advantages of the platform in a geography are protected. Adeployment of the platform in a particular geography, such as is shownin FIG. 56 may provide advantages to participants in the deploymentgeography. In an example, a carrier or network provider in Canada mayhave an advantage over a carrier or provider in another geographybecause the mobile media is more readily accessible to the Canadianparticipant.

The elements depicted in flow charts and block diagrams throughout thefigures imply logical boundaries between the elements. However,according to software or hardware engineering practices, the depictedelements and the functions thereof may be implemented as parts of amonolithic software structure, as standalone software modules, or asmodules that employ external routines, code, services, and so forth, orany combination of these, and all such implementations are within thescope of the present disclosure. Thus, while the foregoing drawings anddescription set forth functional aspects of the disclosed systems, noparticular arrangement of software for implementing these functionalaspects should be inferred from these descriptions unless explicitlystated or otherwise clear from the context.

Similarly, it will be appreciated that the various steps identified anddescribed above may be varied, and that the order of steps may beadapted to particular applications of the techniques disclosed herein.All such variations and modifications are intended to fall within thescope of this disclosure. As such, the depiction and/or description ofan order for various steps should not be understood to require aparticular order of execution for those steps, unless required by aparticular application, or explicitly stated or otherwise clear from thecontext.

The methods or processes described above, and steps thereof, may berealized in hardware, software, or any combination of these suitable fora particular application. The hardware may include a general-purposecomputer and/or dedicated computing device. The processes may berealized in one or more microprocessors, microcontrollers, embeddedmicrocontrollers, programmable digital signal processors or otherprogrammable device, along with internal and/or external memory. Theprocesses may also, or instead, be embodied in an application specificintegrated circuit, a programmable gate array, programmable array logic,or any other device or combination of devices that may be configured toprocess electronic signals. It will further be appreciated that one ormore of the processes may be realized as computer executable codecreated using a structured programming language such as C, an objectoriented programming language such as C++, or any other high-level orlow-level programming language (including assembly languages, hardwaredescription languages, and database programming languages andtechnologies) that may be stored, compiled or interpreted to run on oneof the above devices, as well as heterogeneous combinations ofprocessors, processor architectures, or combinations of differenthardware and software.

Thus, in one aspect, each method described above and combinationsthereof may be embodied in computer executable code that, when executingon one or more computing devices, performs the steps thereof. In anotheraspect, the methods may be embodied in systems that perform the stepsthereof, and may be distributed across devices in a number of ways, orall of the functionality may be integrated into a dedicated, standalonedevice or other hardware. In another aspect, means for performing thesteps associated with the processes described above may include any ofthe hardware and/or software described above. All such permutations andcombinations are intended to fall within the scope of the presentdisclosure.

While the invention has been disclosed in connection with the preferredembodiments shown and described in detail, various modifications andimprovements thereon will become readily apparent to those skilled inthe art. Accordingly, the spirit and scope of the present invention isnot to be limited by the foregoing examples, but is to be understood inthe broadest sense allowable by law.

All documents referenced herein are hereby incorporated by reference.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of switching between broadcast andunicast content on a mobile device, comprising: making broadcast contentavailable to the mobile device; providing a facility through whichunicast content may be discovered based on the broadcast content; makingthe discovered unicast content available to a mobile device; andproviding an application on the mobile device which allows for switchingat the mobile device between the unicast and broadcast content.